Lots of folks here arguing that the focus on TikTok is unfair, given the data collection practices of domestic corps like Facebook. From a privacy point of view, this argument is well-founded, but I think it's tangential to the argument TFA is making, which is: this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk.
I get it. We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that other bad actors can exploit it. I'm with you, this is a valid concern that we should address. But I think TikTok's specific case warrants additional concern because it's all that, plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
I don't think it's reasonable to wait for general regulation of social media corps while TikTok continues to do its thing, particularly if targeted action against TikTok is politically viable.
> this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk.
How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case
It's only off-base for citizens of the US. For other countries, there is no material difference between what either is doing. Except that one of them has a track record of extralegal assassinations, of course.
Not only a democracy, but a constitutional republic with an independent court and military, both of which are sworn to uphold that constitution and all the human rights it enumerates.
We don't always succeed at that, but at least we have that as our society and government's guidestar, and legal and political processes for self-correcting.
The Communist Party has exactly zero of any of that, and an ideology entirely oriented around justifying getting and keeping power by any means necessary.
How do you mean exactly? I'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I said. Politically I'm an independent, there's no real home for me any US political party.
You support the U.S government rather than specific policies. That makes you a party supporter on the international stage.
In this particular case you support U.S oversight over personal data rather than personal privacy(i.e banning data harvesting).
It's like saying it's fine for the Democrats to harvest personal data because they have a better track record than the republicans and after all "you" are democrat so being part of this select group makes you feel safe from a potential abuse. The sensible/right thing to do would be to ban the data harvesting.
Oh, to clarify, I don’t support the US government per se, but any constitutional democracy with limitations on power, checks and balances, etc. Also in the great hierarchy of things I absolutely support personal privacy over any government and/or corporate control of its citizens’ data. Banning of data harvesting, or at least the right to opt out, right to encryption, self-sovereign identity, etc. But I also believe it’s far more likely to actually achieve that in a democracy than under a totalitarian government.
>> But I also believe it’s far more likely to actually achieve that in a democracy than under a totalitarian government.
Yeah but instead to ask for a ban on data harvesting "you" complain only about China avoiding the elephant in the room. As it's said: Lead by example!
Let's ban this data harvesting and make this a discussion about individual rights not China social app rise or U.S domination(though the meta apps). That's why I said you are playing "party" politics. Yeah China is bad but why should I choose the lesser evil instead to do the right thing?
I really hoped that China being a rough actor could actually bring something good to the whole world as we have to reevaluate our trust model: Why should I trust a foreign company, a local company, my gov or a foreign gov to harvest all this personal data. Why do they need all this data and they use it?
I think the EU digital market act and GDPR is a step in the right direction not selectively banning certain apps that do not align with the interests of a small government or an over reaching gov such the U.S. We have to fight for our rights not the exclusive rights of super governments to invade our privacy.
But as it's well known the U.S didn't mind undermining other democracies(i.e Iran's 1953 coup) and supporting dictatorships. It's really more about "interests" and as it happens sometimes U.S interests and democratic rights align but sometimes the opposite is true. We shouldn't put our data in the hands of any government. I would say thay banning international data harversting is a good thing. Next: ban national data harvesting as well
'National security risk' is all the FCC is arguing; they're not arguing that these data collection practices are bad in themselves, only that they're bad if it happens in a way that strengthens a foreign government.
It doesn't have to be extremely easy, and it isn't extremely easy at every company. Twitter's security was bad, worse than it should have been for their size/ data footprint.
I do agree that data collection is at the core of the problem, but Twitter really should have done a better job.
No amount of "security" is enough for an actor who wants to do this and has privileged to the data. This is almost impossible to out-engineer, if you think a company like Twitter cannot solve "such an easy problem" you're being naive.
Not really sure what your point is. I did read the article. I didn't comment on TikTok, which would be legally required (and I am sure compliant, although they deny that in the article) to hand data over to the Chinese government. I commented on Twitter, which was hacked by amateurs, and absolutely could have been considerably harder as a target.
My point is, you only need a rogue CTO (most of which have no actual idea of how technology works, i.e. an amateur) and it's over; or you know, any of the 10,000s of engineers currently employed on your favorite FAANG company.
The "nationality" of a company is basically irrelevant here. Foreign governments could obtain this data from an "American" company in numerous different ways.m The most obvious vector would be a subpoena, but they could also negotiate payment for the data or infiltrate the company.
There's a shitload of data for sale from brokers. So foreign governments might not even need much from a company like FB. Perhaps just enough to confirm the validity of data purchase from other sources.
It's not irrelevant to the FCC, a United States federal organization. I don't think any brokers are selling "execute code on 10s of millions of US citizens' phones" to foreign entities, and if they were I suspect the FCC would have something to say about it.
Data brokers are absolutely, 100%, verifiably selling data collected by large american tech companies and selling them to foreign actors. See: Emerdata for one example. Yeah, the FTC makes attempts to take on these companies, but only if they find out about their activities, and even then, only years after the fact.
The difference is that when we hear about that being done extrajudicially, it's a scandal.
We have a system where due process is required. Sometimes authorities break those laws. But the system and culture is nonetheless there and for a reason.
The US isn't rounding thousands (millions actually?) of civil, political, religious, and other kinds of dissenters and imprisoning, reeducating, or killing them.
That's kind of a big difference here.
The CCP has mandatory seats on the bytedance board and wants a copy of all the data so they can target people.
Spying is bad, murder is next-level bad.
Stop it all, but start with the bigger issues first.
> The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
~ John Erlichman, Nixon's Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
And the US has no problem executing prisoners, and in fact unlike China has no problem executing someone for crimes committed while a minor (only the US, Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia do this).
And that's before even getting into the extrajudicial politically motivated killings like Fred Hampton's murder, the MOVE bombing, or the recent odd proclivity of Ferguson and BLM protest organizers to "kill themselves" by hanging in a public tree, or "shooting themselves" in the head and then torching the car that they were in.
Half the US seems to be dissidents depending on who you ask - but they aren't being rounded up and sent to reeducation camps or having their organs harvested.
What an odd reply, suddenly I'm the bad person and I 'hate' people because I want to save them?
Dissidents = "Disagreeing, as in opinion or belief"
The government in power decides who this is and then acts against them according. The CCP just happens to use lethal force on a massive scale in this regard.
Another really odd reply, after looking at your comment history I can see you're very pro-china and seem to be a troll in this one area based on others exchanges people have had with you.
Saying I should fear both is like saying I should fear dying in a car accident and being mauled by kangaroos.
The Chinese Government can't do anything to me unless I go there. Meanwhile my own government here presents an ever-present real life danger on multiple fronts. I still don't exactly fear it, but at least I know which is more likely to do me harm. Or for that matter, to do harm to others with my tax dollars.
The notion which myself and others have problem with is that the US Federal Govt and the CCP are entities which we should be treating with a similar level of trust and care. The CCP has proven time and time again, be it from their refusal to cooperate with studying the source of COVID, or their continued systematic genocide of the Uighur population, that they are not a political institution which can be trusted or respected on the world stage.
This isn't to say that the USG should be admired or emulated, far from it, but as someone who's neither Chinese nor American, I think it's an objective truth that most people in the world fared better under 20th century American-hegemony than the worldwide Sinicization which the CCP has made clear is its aim.
Americans pick and choose which media to listen to. And the media across the spectrum is aligned on one thing: China Bad, US Good. However, if you listen to NPR, it _does_ matter that we're locking up immigrants in the South. But did you hear that NPR story about Uyghur genocide? Then you look for other non-American affiliated publications on the matter and they are slim pickings. Why does the United States focus so much on China? And yeah, it's mostly to manufacture consent.
I actually think it's naive. Sure if military personnel or state department use TikTok that can create security risks, but the same is true with any other social media network.
The additional data that TikTok tries to gather from the mobile OSs is insignificant compared to what you can get from videos that people take willingly.
Russian soldiers use VK, that doesn't stop OSINT researchers tracking them down on there.
Military personnel is not what this is about, it's about the data of all the citizens in the US. It's about manipulating public opinion, sowing divide or a thousand other options.
But shouldn't that concern go the other way? If the Chinese government is dictating content policies of TikTok, that should obviously be a concern, but I have not seen this alleged.
Granted collecting say interest data based on viewing figures would be a precursor (I suppose it's likely that TikTok could figure out if a customer leaned left or right politically). But again that's not what the complaint is about.
It's also hard to ignore that TikTok's responses are at face value reasonable (such as evaluating touch patterns to identify bots... that's obviously something they have to do given the predominance of bots on social media platforms).
I mean, TikTok can manipulate public opinion and access to information more easily than that, by simply artificially demoting/promoting certain content — no user data needed.
Even without the government dictating content policies, the threat is still there. Take how the Chinese government has addressed the exact same concern from their side. That is to say, they've banned US social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and who's to say if it's solely because of the allegations that those platforms follow US government dictations.
A forseeable future is one where Americans are using VPN to access Tik Tok and then we see some government officials clamoring for an American version of the GFW.
Not to disagree with you but it might also nice to nuance that statement. Being a democracy isn't an either/or proposition. It's more of a continuum.
There are some internationally recognized standards what constitutes a democracy, and the USA fits some and not others. For example, the USA wouldn't meet the criteria for democracy to be considered for EU membership, in the unlikely event it would apply for that.
The main sticking point is that it practices capital punishment, together with countries such as People's Republic of China and a handful of African countries. Intralegal execution of minors being especially problematic. Several treaties on international criminal law concerning war crimes is not recognized and its citizens are unlikely to ever be subject to the Geneva convention.
The second important point is the lack of an independent legal system. High ranking judges gets hand picked by politicians, in a very literal way. (Which is something that has also has happened in for example Poland. This is widely regarded as a loop hole in the EU democratic criteria. A country could not have been considered for membership under those conditions, but there is no jurisdictional power against reneging on that policy post membership. Subsidies gets frozen, but that's about it.)
The US is at best an "illiberal democracy"[1]. But it's probably worse than that. Effectively, the US has no opposition party, the ruling party being superficially divided into two nominal parties which agree on 90% of policy and which use their control over the electoral machinery to exclude opposition parties.
Recently, major changes of governmental policy that affect millions of people have been made by an unelected body of officials who have lifetime terms. You may have even seen it in the news.
Arguing otherwise is me not being a functioning democracy?
While I would love to take that on I am genuinely puzzled by what you mean. “No one can question American democracy because they don’t have a better one?” Sorry but if that’s it that’s a dumb take.
A republic is a form of democracy. This strange differentiation came about as a GOP talking point in the early 2000s. I'm amazed that it is still repeated 20 year later. Saying the US is not a democracy but a constitutional republic is like saying a car is not an automobile.
>> This strange differentiation came about as a GOP talking point in the early 2000s.
Actually no, it comes from far earlier in our history that that, GOP may have had it has a talking point not sure, and dont really care, but the GOP is not the origination of this
>Saying the US is not a democracy but a constitutional republic is like saying a car is not an automobile.
No, not all Republics are democratic, and not all Democracy's are republics.
The US has every very very limited elements that are democratic, and at our founding even less so then today. At the founding only the House was democratic everything else was not. IMO we need to go back to that, less democracy would be good
When I was growing up in the 80s, everyone knew the US republic was a form of democracy. Are you arguing that it isn't? I never heard the phrase, "The US isn't a democracy, it's a republic" until around 2000s; the first part being completely wrong, but the second part being right.
>A republic is a form of democracy. This strange differentiation came about as a GOP talking point in the early 2000s.
What? No, this is not a recent talking point, it's the core philosophical difference in this country since day 1. The names of the parties Republican & Democrat aren't just random words, they represent the philosophical differences in where the bulk of the power in government should rest (the republic being the system with input from the people, or the democracy being the direct will of the people).
Republicans generally believe direct democracy is dangerous and instead rely on the framework of the institutions of our Republic to act as guiderails preventing potential mob rule and other acts of capriciousness. The people get their say, within reason.
Democrats generally believe all power and decision making should come directly from the people, and the systems should be more fluid. They don't see them as guiderails they see them as unnecessary constraints on the people. The people get their say, and their will is done.
I would never argue that our politicians of each party believe in this fully, nor the voters for that matter. But this is a huge philosophical difference that predates the early 2000's by a couple hundred years. It's been a talking point since before our Constitution was drafted.
> The names of the parties Republican & Democrat aren't just random words, they represent the philosophical differences in where the bulk of the power in government should rest
No, they don't. Also, the two original parties were the Democratic-Republican Party of Jefferson, Madison, et al., and the Federalist Party of Hamilton, Adams, etc al.
Both, BTW, favored what is, I modern terms, a democratic republic and a representative democracy, though the Federalists initially favored a stronger central seat of power and the Democratic-Republicans favored a weaker central seat of power, though the bigger divide quickly became over foreign policy.
The Republicans weren't a major party until after the Federalist Party collapsed leaving a brief period of unstable one-party domination, then the D-Rs fractured, leaving the Democrats and Whigs in the Second Party system, then the Whigs later collapsed and the Republicans and the Democrats formed the Third Party system with the most critical initial issue being over not abstract form of government but slavery. While the identity of the two major parties has been the same since, their political alignment has changed several times; we’re now in what is generally regarded as the Sixth Party system.
Your post has the tone of disagreeing with what I said, yet never actually does.
The names of the parties change over the years, and the ideologies shift. But we have essentially always had one major party pushing to put more power directly into the hands of voters and another major party wanting to conserve the power in the established governmental frameworks.
The two current parties are no different in that regard. Democrats want to abolish the Electoral College and run government from Ballot propositions (direct democracy in action). Republicans are against those things and want to shift more power to the states of the Republic.
My understanding is that the Democrats want to leverage a strong federal government to various aims (welfare, social security, medicare, medicaid, regulation, etc) while the Republicans want a smaller federal government and give the power to the states. This divide is about power of the federal government vs power of the states, or the Jeffersonian / Hamiltonian divide.
You've shown examples of where the Democrats want more direct democracy, so there's that too. I don't know if this is a recent phenomenon or not. I've never known the Ds to make much about it either way until you mentioned it.
the US is a dictatorship disguised as a democracy..the dictators happen to be those with the most influence and $ which then they hand down generations..no 1 person has ever ruled the world, they are just the main face of the whole...both rep and dem are influenced by the same "shadow" entities..so it doesn't matter who wins from either side they all respond to the same people
>where the bulk of the power in government should rest
You are thinking federalism vs anti-federalism. That was Jefferson and Hamilton. The federalists won a long time ago, mainly through the interpretation of the commerce clause. Recent decisions by the SCOTUS is pulling back on that a little bit.
>Republicans generally believe direct democracy
Nowhere did I say the US was a direct democracy, I think that's what's tripping everyone up. I'm arguing against when people say the US is a republic and not a democracy. That is incorrect. If they had said direct democracy, I would agree with them. To say the US is a republic and not a democracy when every position of power in government was either elected, or appointed by someone who was elected, is incorrect. The democratic process is obvious.
>Democrats generally believe all power and decision making should come directly from the people, and the systems should be more fluid. They don't see them as guiderails they see them as unnecessary constraints on the people. The people get their say, and their will is done.
I don't see any evidence of this in modern politics. Which democrat has mentioned implementing a direct democracy?
Nope. At least not exclusively. The party's change over the years but we have essentially always had one party pushing for more direct democracy, and one party pulling against. A rose by any other name is still rose, but the philosophical idea of Republic government vs Democrat government is always there. And it's the key difference in the two parties.
>I don't see any evidence of this in modern politics. Which democrat has mentioned implementing a direct democracy?
The entire State of California is constantly riddled with ballot propositions, which is direct democracy in many case overturning the work done by their own representative legislature. And California is essentially a one party state so there is no one else to share the blame.
Federally, I can't go a week without reading about yet another proposal to eliminate the Electoral College and use a popular vote for President.
So if you're not seeing any evidence of it, where are you looking?
>The entire State of California is constantly riddled with ballot propositions
Ya, I was thinking federally only. California is its own animal and they do put a lot of things to vote, so you certainly are right with this example.
>Federally, I can't go a week without reading about yet another proposal to eliminate the Electoral College and use a popular vote for President.
That's just people complaining when their candidate doesn't win. If their candidate won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, they wouldn't let out a peep about it I'll bet. Democrats won't actually remove the electoral college because they use superdelegates to ensure the party can put its thumb on any candidate's scale (see Bernie v Clinton and Bernie v Biden).
>So if you're not seeing any evidence of it, where are you looking?
I'm talking about actual politicians proposing actual legislation and recruiting votes in the senate/house, not just lip service from the stump. They don't do it because it doesn't actually benefit them.
That's not true either though. I can't even count how many Democrats have publicly supported the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and most blue states have officially passes legislation signing on to it. https://ballotpedia.org/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Com...
It will happen the day after Kamala Harris (or another democrat) wins the presidential election despite loosing the popular vote.
Most GOP states will then instantly forget their principled support for the electoral college and join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to kill it.
We know this because in 2000 the George W. Bush team thought it was (contrary to what happened) likely to win the popular vote but loose in the electoral college, and had prepared a legal fight against this scenario.
The differences and potential compromises between various democracies and republics were discussed and debated quite at length when the original US governments were iterating toward the Constitution. It's certainly not just a 20 year old GOP talking point.
They were aware that the House of Representatives was modeled to be sole aggregated voice of the people. The House is the totality of US democracic input.
And the senators were appointed by the state governors who were also democratically elected. The president was democratically elected via the electoral college. Justices are appointed by the president who was democratically elected and the senate who were appointed by democratically elected governors.
Again, to say the US is a republic and not a democracy is incorrect. It is both, just like a Civic can both be a car and an automobile.
There's a similar comment here that's dead. People love to complain about the US not being democratic, but when you point out that they're correct and the US is in fact not a democracy and not democratic it gets downvoted.
Because it's a lazy boring way to try to detail a thread. You're arguing something that the other people aren't even saying . Anyone with a half working brain who's gone outside in the last 20 years understands colloquial use of words.
They're saying they want to live in a more democratic place. We're saying the US isn't and won't be that place. It's an actual, incompatible disagreement on how much individual people should affect the government not just a debate about wording.
Colloquial misuse of the word only sets people up for disappointment when they find out that a government they call a democracy isn't one.
This is about as useful as arguing about communism vs socialism, you may be right, in the typical HN pedant way, but all that does it make dumb threads dumber.
I'm not sure it is as black and white as you suggest.
If you were to create a time machine and bring an ancient Athenian to the modern day US, the Athenian would not recognize the US system of government as, democracy. With the exception of jury trials and referendums, the demos do not directly engage in governance.
The US doesn't even allow the majority of the population to select those who perform the actual governing. E.g., a person from Wyoming has much more representation in the Senate than a person from California.
And, for the president, the population votes, but the winner of this election is not the one who got the most votes from the population, it is the one with the most electoral college votes. Again, the Wyoming voter gets more representation with one elector per less than 200K Wyoming residents, and only one elector for over 700K California residents. It is how the US got Bush "W" and Trump even though they both lost the vote of the demos.
With all the money in elections, even if there were majority representation, the US would still have moneyed interests dominating politics.
>how can the United States be a democracy when the “demos” have no say whatsoever in their own governance?
They do have a say. How do they not?
(But keep in mind that 89% of them would disagree with your politics.)
>Where that government puts up roadblock after roadblock protecting itself from the influence of any but the obscenely wealthy?
Compared to where, actual oligarchies like Russia? Your metrics are uncalibrated af.
>I am Gen X. For around five decades now I have voted. It has never affected my life positively.
Congrats, you've apparently been privileged enough to not benefit from Obamacare or the drawdown of the Afghanistan war, or ending "Don't Ask Don't Tell", or the overturn of Trump's transgender service member ban, or the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, or the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, or the halt on federal executions, or the recent reductions in unemployment, etc.
To you, these things were unnoticeable blips in an uninteresting history because you were never in the unfortunate positions that apply, like someone on welfare, someone in the military, etc.
>Roe v Wade overturned
You got this because all of the people who voted Republican got it (since the Republicans packed the Supreme Court with three conservative judges). So, for them, the system worked. Also, it gets funnier: Roe v Wade, if you read its Wikipedia article, was considered a pretty bad ruling, and some predicted that how poor it was opened the door for overturn later. Meanwhile, in the decades that the Supreme Court let it languish, like a hazardously-perched kludge giving women everywhere abortion rights, Democrats failed to vote for actual legislation protecting abortion rights as they should have.
That's why "you got" Roe v Wade overturned.
On the plus side, a strong majority of Americans support abortion, so it shouldn't be difficult to vote for legislation. The only thing that could mess that up is silly, entitled, nihilist attitudes like yours.
>But hey, we can get rid of the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling. Just not to investigate cops for being Nazis.
It's terrible because the best solution to escape the two-party system, including all the animosity (where it is always strategically disadvantageous to join any other party thanks to the first-past-the-post voting system) is something like IRV (instant-runoff voting).
> At least in China the majority of people actually trust their government.
Sure, as long as you don't say the wrong thing and get "disappeared", and have no one to turn to (since the one-party government also controls the courts and legal system), what's not to trust?? LOL, GTFO of here, you absolute fool
Ok. Put a stop to TikTok and allow US companies to vacuum up our data. China then hacks those companies servers or installs agents within the companies and gets the data anyway. Security threat not avoided.
None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.
Again, I agree, "We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that _other bad actors can exploit it_."
My point is, if finding the political will required to stop TikTok is easier than it is to regulate data collection more generally, we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yes, we are in agreement. I was responding to the comment “But I think TikTok's specific case warrants additional concern because it's all that, plus …”. My point is that they are all a concern and plugging a few holes in the privacy dam will not prevent China from getting the data. I’d be very surprised if China does not already have 100’s even 1000’s of agents working in US tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Furthermore, almost all of the devices and many of the chips we use to run apps are built in China. Why is the FCC not concerned about that?
It is folly to think that "Install Chinese government spyware on a phone" is the same level of effort as "Force the Chinese government to work on advanced persistent threats and install massive exfiltration malware on some of the most secure networks on the planet".
Well said. Between "voluntarily install garden-variety malware on your devices" and "force the CCP to spend massive amounts of time and money on exploits that they could otherwise use against their more important targets", I'll take the latter.
Or even just buy the data from data brokers. What you're highlighting is what makes TikTok different: there is a foreign adversary that is a major player in the attention economy. Observing is one thing, influencing is completely unacceptable. Especially in a post-truth society.
Is the data the issue? Or is it ongoing interference with the algorithm that pushes content to users that's the real issue? Tweaking what the users see affects those users far more than just selling their data to make money.
Yes, the hoarded data is per se dangerous. It should not exist, as in, it should be very illegal to collect and retain. That goes for non-tech companies that do similar things, like credit card companies.
[EDIT] That is, things like credit card companies selling your purchase history. Obviously they do need to retain some of that information to operate, but they shouldn't be able to sell access to it or use it for any other purpose. Ditto banks, magazines selling subscriber lists, all that crap. Should not be legal.
Yes, that is a concern as well. There is a threat from three primary vectors: data, algorithm, and hardware. All can be used for nefarious purposes with hardware being the most fundamental and scariest threat of all.
this isn't just about data collection. china should not be allowed to become a tech power. producing a popular social media app with advanced machine learning counts as that. china should be allowed to produce our widgets and mind its place, we can't allow a communist country and a potential global competitor to America to advance past that.
Agreed, these complaints about hypocrisy are nonsensical. If a serial killer locks his door at night for fear of being murdered, he’s not a hypocrite. On the contrary, his evil deeds have made him wise to the dangers of the night.
> Why do Americans think they represent the world?
I don't claim to.
The context is: US regulators arguing for operational restrictions of a foreign-to-the-US company on the basis of being controlled by an adversary of the US.
If you have any insight from a place with friendly relations with China, you're welcome to share it.
Does America represent the national security strategy of essentially all of Europe, most non-Chinese nations in Asia, and much of South America?
Absolutely, and to pretend otherwise is to be dreaming.
If you’re not in one of those areas then you are correct that your adversary is not our adversary. But it’s pretty statistically likely you are, and in that case the two are linked.
You’re welcome to return the trillions spent on your defense, of course, and set up your own naval strategy and naval supply chains to defend your trade routes.
This is almost certainly Facebook just lobbying to get mindshare back from TikTok. It's great for the US government too, who probably already has unfettered access to everything Facebook collects on its users. If US users go to TikTok, Facebook loses money, and the US gov't loses easy access to all that sweet sweet data. So probably Facebook doesn't even have to lobby too hard for a statement like this to come out from the FCC. Whether or not it's true doesn't even really matter. Do you want your personal data flowing to the CCP or the US gov't & Facebook/Instagram? Both seem like really bad choices to me. The only good choice is not to use any of these services at all.
Honestly, if some government needs to have my data, and I can't reasonably prevent it, I would be more than happy if that's some government on the other side of the planet without practical means to put me in jail, torture, and influence to do things that can harm me and my friends and family.
Being spied by Russia, no problem. Being spied by China, no big deal either. But being spied by the USA or EU controlled entities can pose a life thread to any EU citizen.
US citizens have it only a bit better, since they are at least protected from the EU, and only their own government has power upon them.
>plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
You should interrogate your assumption that the government inside the state lines is less "adversarial" to everyone's interests than the one outside state lines, even at a level of geopolitics.
The government is the one deciding what adversarial means here. Of course they’re not going to label themselves or domestic companies they regulate national security adversaries.
This comment doesn't seem to understand what the parent was saying or engage with their argument at all?
1. No it's not fine that American companies are threats to privacy and so on, and it should be dealt with.
2. However TikTok is a special case in that in addition to the above, it presents a national security risk (to the Americans), so it's reasonable to treat it differently and with more urgency.
There's some discussion about this in the article.
> Surely there is a shutdown button to press if TikTok go rouge.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "going rogue". The idea is that the company is already closely connected to the Chinese government. Are you saying the Americans should wait until they have undeniable proof that the data is being used for the political purposes of the CCP? Would they even be able to find that out (and if they did, would they be able to tell the world how?)?
> Dissidents should rather use the social networks the gov. or establishment wants to ban than the one they control (e.g. FB).
That makes some sense, sure, but we're not talking about security from the perspective of dissidents, we're talking about national security from the viewpoint of the government and the mainstream population, which is the one you'd expect the FCC to act according to.
I would assume the fear is the PRC is gaining troves of data on individuals interests including politically divisive issues. This insight could lead to undue influence on the American population during elections or times of war.
Why do you have such a hard on for China or tiktok? As it is, the sword only cuts one-way. A Chinese social media company gets unfiltered access to western markets and populace but China wont allow the same in return. That's not a fair deal; so I say ban tiktok until China decides western social media companies can operate inside China with the same level of freedom that tiktok operates outside China.
The U.S. can ban Tiktok within its own borders (for whatever reason) without making any attempt to legislate the rules for Tiktok in any other country.
- Our phone hardware and operating systems are intrinsically insecure.
- There is no practical/effective data gathering regulation (and I'm not sure
it's possible to craft any without destroying innovation)
- All social media companies are doing it, leading to jeers of "hypocrisy!"
- All governments play the same games, reducing the arguments to
"Whose side are you on?" That's effectively meaningless in a
globalised world. The consequence is more nationalism and an ever
more fragmented splinternet.
- The only proposed solutions amount to more authoritarian,
controlling and regulatory responses.
What can we do?
There is a solution. Stop protecting these companies. Burn down
WIPO. Tear up practically all "intellectual property" laws. Revoke
millions of patents. Repeal all DCMA type laws regarding reverse
engineering. Kick trademark and brand protection law to the curb.
The real problem is gargantuan monolithic, captive audiences that
exist because incumbent monopolies enjoy protectionist measures that
amount to a giant international trade racket.
Creating a real market that forces radical interoperability would
solve many of the problems we see today. Who would care about TiKToK
or Facebook if they were one of 500,000 small "Social Apps" that
connected to a standardised international network.
Hell, we could even give it a catchy name, like "The Internet".
I agree with your argument, but not your conclusion. It is important
for people to know who made the stuff they're getting. Signing code is
a perfect example. Unfortunately I think "trademarks" are a 20th
century idea. There are many ways of supporting authenticity of
provenance that aren't easily corrupted and weaponised as a way to
stymie competition.
> There is no practical/effective data gathering regulation (and I'm not sure it's possible to craft any without destroying innovation)
Yes there is: Don't
Anything that is not fully and obviously intentionally completely public is e2ee and inaccessible outside of the user's device. Information that is provably necessary for providing a paid service can be collected and kept until the second it is no longer necessary so long as the process is publicly documented. Any weights, faux anonymized data or similar derived from the pii must also be deleted.
I think that's far to vague to be workable and sounds incredibly expensive (unless everyone uses those loopholes).
Storing data on user's devices isn't great, it takes up storage space (adding cost) and relies on the user to manage the backups (which lots of folks don't do). Users also switch between devices, so you'd need some sort of cross-device syncing or something.
e2ee implies that the data can only be decrypted by the user's key. If the user loses their key, they lose data access. Since keys are user managed you need to deal with user support/education and build interfaces to support key management. e2ee isn't something you can bolt on an existing system. This sounds quite expensive to implement, so you'll shift significant funds away from other development (destroying innovation).
If today I'm running a Django site that allows users to message each other, do I need to change from my server-side template rendered system to a client-side rendered system?
For loop holes, I'd expect people to claim that they can't rely on device storage, need to support multiple devices, need to support customers who can't manage keys, perform heavy-weight rendering that would consume too much device battery and run slowly, etc.
These ideas are very 2020s focused. As the software industry evolves, would we need to convince politicians to allow us to use better technology that challenges assumptions we have today?
For messaging, Matrix has solved almost all of the problems you're claiming are insurmountable. Key management can be assisted with m out of n type secret sharing, or we just treat people like responsible adults, and if they lose their keys, then tough, those messages are gone now.
For loopholes, the solution is to just not believe the bullshit. Have a very high standard of evidence required and/or require fully informing the user of exactly what is stored, where it is stored, who can access it, and publicly sharing all code that touches it.
It's been proven over and over again that the current model does not work and that the people in charge are narcassistic children who cannot be trusted and lie constantly.
The GDPR is a half measure designed as much around enabling surveillance as safeguarding privacy. Anonymisation is a blatant lie. 'Innovation' is just a codeword for doing the same things we did before but worse.
Not insurmountable, just very expensive. You're describing a worse user experience too.
Matrix probably isn't a good example. That's an impressive project with great developers. Most companies don't have equivalent staff, nor the budget to hire.
If an industry has proven repeatedly they can't be trusted not to stalk people and lie about it followed by being recklessly irresponsible with data and lying about breaches, then it's the bare minimum that should be enforced.
It would also encourage the innovation that you're so keen on because users wouldn't be trapped and you couldn't sit on one feature forever. You'd have to have an ongoing value proposition like every other vocation in all of history.
Sadly none of this is doable in the current version of capitalism (and in pretty much every country that is drinking from it). Corporation interests, especially those of large corporations, override pretty much everything else.
Please be more creative than your assumption that trying to do better than capitalism means everything becomes state-owned. Markets have value, capitalism is materially different from a market economy.
This is a low-value comment that doesn't add any value to the conversation. GP explicitly asked "Please elaborate on what other "version of capitalism" is necessary." which this comment does not attempt to answer, the language used here is unnecessarily abrasive, and the "assumption" this comment claims was made by GP doesn't actually exist.
I think they're indicating that both Google and Apple will have sufficient motivation to weaken the security of their devices as long as there's money involved with it. With the combination of corporate interest and a lack of accountable oversight, it can be plainly assumed that all of FAANG is an equally dangerous domestic security risk.
Not the FCC, this is one FCC commissioner's statement. He's not the chair, nor is he part of the majority party, so you can probably read this as a political statement.
Republicans had a chance to ban TikTok during the last administration. They did not do it.
It annoys me that these headlines keep falsely attributing his statements to the FCC as a whole. I hate TikTok and I tend to agree that it’s a security risk (so, too, is Facebook, IMO). But this guy has it out for TikTok solely for political reasons and in order to please Trump.
To be fair, and I'm not fan of Trump, but if Trump hypothetically supported something good... like let's say universal healthcare, a lot of Democrats would oppose it just because Trump supported it.
No they wouldn't. There'd be a lot of Republicans who would be running around telling everyone how universal healthcare is actually a good thing now, but any Democratic concerns would mostly be tied to quibbles with process and taxation, not the healthcare itself.
I don't see any meaningful way to talk about that hypothetical. Much of what Trump says is chosen specifically to enrage people, and Democrats in particular.
Even if he chose to support, say, universal health care, it would be buried in so much deliberate harassment that there would be no way to arrive at a workable plan.
The suggestion is so counterfactual that I just can't address it one way or the other. He achieved very little legislatively because he didn't really want anything except to anger people. The one thing he achieved is by appointing people to a lifetime office that isn't subjected to checks and balances -- and that accomplishes everything he might want.
Perhaps the real world example of this is the price transparency laws that Trump pushed through. Whether democrats were staunchly against it, I don’t actually recall.
Before Trump won the Republican nomination for 2016, during one of the debates against Rubio and Cruz and whoever else had not yet dropped out Trump actually brought up universal healthcare as a reason to support him over Cruz and Rubio, saying we'd get it under him and not under them.
Damn, I found this hard to believe so I looked it up [1], and you're right.
It's like when Lois says "9/11" and everyone goes wild [2].
> Mr. Trump, you have said you want to appeal Obamacare. You have also said, quote, "Everybody's got to be covered," adding, quote, "The government's going to pay for it." Are you closer to Bernie Sanders' vision for health care than Hillary Clinton's?
> TRUMP: I don't think I am. I think I'm closer to common sense. We are going to repeal Obamacare.
I'm pretty sure if Trump supported universal healthcare, people would get on board.
The problem is 1) very few of his actual policies were good on the face of them and 2) even some of the milquetoast stuff he did had unsavory motivation.
Realistically, any theoretical universal healthcare proposed by Trump would probably have strings attached that further eroded the functioning of the federal government (which is a common theme between pretty much all R legislation).
My concern seems to be different than that of most expressed here. Companies collecting too much information is a problem, sure, but that's not what deeply worries me when it comes to social media generating/consuming platforms like Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Especially those that algorithmically decide what to show users.
Foreign countries controlling what information a coming generation is exposed to is IMO much more concerning than collecting and profiling (of course also troubling, but a slightly different league). There is little oversight into what bubbles are formed, who is fed what, etc.
Want to create division in a foreign country? What better place to start than on social media and malleable kids.
This applies equally to TikTok as Facebook, for different reasons. I don't trust TikTok because of CCP, and Facebook because everything is for sale.
I wouldn't really say that the nationality is all that important. Just what my prejudices say. CCP tend to stifle opinions they dislike. Russia tends to fund divisiveness in the west. Facebook and US companies in general do whatever makes them money entirely devoid of any moral compass. Google sometimes can be gamed due to either carelessness or ineptitude. In any case, and as mentioned, mostly prejudice, is the answer to your question.
Lawyer that opposed net neutrality and now voicing his disapproval of apps built by the China.
Sounds like he's making a play to become a career politician using his version of what 'ok authoritarianism' is.
I'd like to see someone actually prove a security risk rather than hypothetically posing it. I.e. show me 1000 tiktok downloaded videos run through a program with their metadata something of strategic importance to a nation state (like the location of nuclear missiles haha).
There are some provisions for getting data out but they all rely on guaranteeing the same level of protection as GDPR does. This also runs afoul with the CLOUD act since due to that American companies can't store data inside the EU and be compliant.
I'm not asking for tik tok data specifically. I'm saying given a subset of X videos with metadata, show me how you can exfiltrate something of interest to a nation state.
Military bases have controls in place that ban things like tik tok + filming on site and even phones manufactured in China aren't allowed on site (they need to be checked in or whatever when you arrive at the entrypoint).
Prove this claim and then we can talk about the risk of apps like TikTok. Right now it's a false as saying Wifi signals cause brain cancer coz electromagnetism === bad for humans.
> I'd like to see someone actually prove a security risk rather than hypothetically posing it.
A security risk is by nature hypothetical. If the risk comes to fruition, it's no longer a risk, it's an event or an incident or whatever.
I think it's right to say such data harvesting posses a security risk. I don't necessarily think the nationality of the corporation collecting it makes a huge difference though. If the concern is state level abuse of the harvested data, sure, it's much easier for any given state to access data when the data is stored by an entity that has strong state influence, but given the patterns of hiring at large scale data collectors, it can't be too hard to get state operatives into positions where they have large scale discrectionary access to data.
Also, I'm not really convinced that the FCC is expected to consider national security concerns, or if they have significant regulatory oversight of the app store market either?
> A security risk is by nature hypothetical. If the risk comes to fruition, it's no longer a risk, it's an event or an incident or whatever.
Not true. CPU exploits come out all the time with proof of how to exploit / exfiltrate data. This claim of a 'risk' is unproven as it's based on a poor hypothesis of 'country has our data === bad'
> I'd like to see someone actually prove a security risk
Even if we could access all the data, the proof would come too late, by definition.
Of course seeing the proof would be interesting, but that's not the point. Rules are created to protect interests, weighing advantages and disadvantages. That's why allies get more leeway than enemies.
I don't know what your position is, but there are various people in this thread calling such a measure "dangerous" and comparing tiktok to facebook. First: there's more than one dangerous thing in the world, and calling outlawing tiktok dangerous probably says more about their addiction than it does about liberties. Second, facebook is also "social media" that collects data, but that's where the similarity ends. You can't expect two entities to be treated identically just because they share some features. I cannot believe people make such arguments seriously and in good faith.
"TikTok is said to collect “everything”, from search and browsing histories; keystroke patterns; biometric identifiers—including faceprints"
How can they even collect browsing history or biometric identifiers on Android? Isn't browser history stored in the browser's private storage space, or am I being naive here?
Very unlikely to be accurate. If it was, TikTok wouldn't be on the app stores.
* Browsing history: If a user uses a WebView in your app, you can obtain the history of* that WebView instance.
Xiaomi phones let applications have access to the first (100?) bytes of each pcap line. [note: this is probably unintended, but their bug bounty programme didn't care].
* Keystroke patterns: You can track user keystrokes within your app. If you're a keyboard or accessibility provider, you can access keystrokes globally. I haven't used TikTok, but it's very unlikely that they do either of these, the UX to enable them is not pleasant because they're dangerous actions to take.
* Biometric identifiers: If a user takes a selfie, you have their iris/fingerprint/faceprint
A 'row' of packet capture data (in Wireshark's output). I apologize for the lack of clarity. I'm unfamiliar with network terminology and unsure what this looks like on the binary level.
The files are in: /storage/emulated/0/MIUI/debug_log/common/tcpdump if you have a phone to test.
The standard Android ability to get WebView history is only the history for the instance of the WebView which you created (totally reasonable IMO, there's lots of non-nefarious purposes that you'd want to intercept requests[0]).
To my limited understanding, the file on Xiaomi phones is a dump of all the packets that your router would see. If you're using HTTPS, it's probably leaking the sites, but it's mostly garbage.
I think that would happen in combination with the remote server replying "304 Not Modified"
Now that you mentioned it tho, I'm not sure whether developer tools is showing me the ground truth, how does it give me 200 OK from cache without asking the remote whether the resource has changed? My memory agrees with you, something has changed in the matrix.
Browsing history: many apps (like reddit, Instagram) have their own browser in the app so they can track it, and they nag you to use their app when you open their website.
Biometric identifiers, I'm guessing mostly facial features: if you take a selfie/self-video with TikTok (which millions of people do) they can just take the data from there.
The thing people are missing when they say "naturally foreign government collecting data is a security risk" - is that by US openly admitting this - they are signaling to all other countries allowing US tech companies to operate there that they should be firewalling because it is a security risk.
World is > US and China, Europe, SA, Africa, the rest of Asia - this is a clear cut message "you need to have your social networking in-country to prevent others from compromising you".
I honestly think that should be done anyway. For example, if Britain blocked Facebook for not being consumer friendly what would we really lose? Facebook would be recreated over night. The profits would be kept in country. And in addition, we might have a slightly better barrier against the American culture seeping into the country.
Sure, we could lose some app integrations but if the internet was more segregated API standards would be developed to mitigate this.
Ofcom are slowly getting their teeth back with upcoming regulation (3 decades late IMO), but in answer to "what would we really lose?", we'd likely suffer immediate tit-for-tat responses from the US if we attempted to meaningfully regulate or partition our media from theirs again.
I don't think anyone who has spent much time thinking about it sees the Russia/China/Iran firewalls as a bad thing, but we aren't them and we can't regulate our media in the same way.
That's ridiculous - for a lot of people I know number one use case for Facebook is keeping in touch with people that move away - very often out of country.
Rebuilding social network would take a long time, having it country specific would be pointlessly limiting.
Chunking up internet between countries would be going down further into isolationism for GB since they aren't even a part of EU anymore.
It's not ridiculous. I'd say if US and UK policy on privacy continues to diverge it may become necessary or even obvious.
It only seems ridiculous because it hasn't happened yet.
Other solutions can be found to keeping in contact with friends that move away without having to give undue power to some international tech behemoth. And while building a new Facebook wouldn't be easy, I wouldn't say it would be necessarily hard either. It'll just take time. Hell, the competition may even be good for Facebook on the end.
Red flags ever since it was "breaking news" in the infosec community that TikTok collects "all information." It's sad at this point how much of a slave humanity is to vanity and social media. Social media is a higher risk to humanity than Climate Change.
> When challenged if the CCP has seen any non-public user data, he said, “We have never shared information with the Chinese government nor would we […]
Such easy misdirection. Never shared, doesn't mean CCP doesn't just injest it. Most people don't have the ability to understand how information works in tech anyway. I don't blame them. We're in a situation that's way worse than "the 1%", it's the 0.001% that know how information technology works.
As an aside...
I can't tell if it is a comedy, tragedy, or thriller when the story-line that ends up creating AGI most likely will be an Intelligence Agency. With all the data collection they're doing and prediction, they may even already have invented it decades ago.
One interesting aspect of this case is that, should Apple and Google follow through and force TikTok off their App Stores - many people will feel quite "disenfranchised" due to the popularity of the App.
This would force many who would otherwise never think about the consequences of these walled garden ecosystems and their lack of control, to suddenly have to do so.
As stupid as the idea is I'm hoping it happens for this reason. Maybe people will realize the importance of truly owning their devices. It would be pretty ironic if that were to happen over TikTok, though.
The other side of the coin that I experience in my circles is parents and people just don't care. Everyone I talk with about pretty much says the same thing along the lines of 'if they want to look at my diddly Doo this then they're most welcome too'.
A lot of people generally really don't care a hoot about this stuff.
It’s easy to not care if you don’t get the full picture. The data in question is not “your diddly doo”, but the aggregated diddly-doos of 200 million people and the insights and power it provides.
Again, did i say i don’t care? Are you trying to be constructive here or should i refer you to Reddit?
Exception handling matters. Your attitude towards these edge cases is likely damaging the argument that you and i both seem to agree on: allowing anon reviews is healthy, freedom of saying what you feel to be fair and true is important. The issue as i see it is if companies ask to let themselves self regulate via moderation of some form, yet allow damage to occur as that’s important to their business model, they have to expect courts and eventually public sentiment to shift perspectives. This is why i say, the attitude of not handling these exceptions well is dangerous and likely damaging to the objective of freedom of expression. The model needs improving to protect privacy yet prevent damage to private individual and businesses. News papers have been publishing retractions for hundreds of years, if it wasn’t for this their business would also have died long ago.
Sorry but I think you’ve read my comment wrong - this writing style may not be popular everywhere: "you" in my previous comment is figurative, interchangeable with "one", as in "one may think...". It's not referring to you in particular.
Rephrasing, I think people don't care because they are only thinking of their own "personal secrets", and don't realize the big-data aspect of this type of data collection (which is understandably a bit hard to grasp for people outside of tech). Their lack of concern is simply a reflection of the lack of perspective, not a valid counter-argument to privacy protection - needs a lot longer legs to become a position worthy of consideration.
What disturbs me is that it seems to be taken as a given that a piece of software running on our computers can even be “banned” in the first place. This statement would have no fangs if we could run any software we liked on our devices. But we’ve gone so far down the walled garden path that the implication seems to be “removed from app stores” => “no longer running on US customers’ devices.” Regardless of what you think about TikTok in particular, or about the benefits of walled garden platforms, this is a chilling omen of things to come.
Uncle Sam asking the 2 great censors of the west to get rid of the most popular app in their stores, so that the east will cease competing with said Uncle on who gets to brainwash their citizens. Gold.
Whichever way this goes, one of these parties loses big, which is a good thing for us humans.
As much as the US government does questionable and bad things (and it does), the CCP is worse. The US still has at least the semblance of the rule of law. There is still some separation between corporations and the government.
Corporations in China are extensions of the state and tools of foreign policy in a way they just aren't in the West. The US government can also be replaced. That's why China and the US just aren't equivalent here and why something like Tiktok is of greater risk and concern than any US Big Tech app or platform.
Yes, US law enforcement can get access to, say, messages. There's a process for that. Some of it is pretty questionable (eg FISA court, pen registers, NSLs) but at least there's a process. I don't for a second believe that US intelligence has a firehose of everything posted on Twitter and Facebook just because I don't believe the US government has the storage capacity required.
Secondly, China is completely protectionist about access to its market. There are Chinese versions for every app and platform. China uses access to its market as a giant carrot to exact concessions from Western companies but they're chasing a phantom: China will never let any Western company "win" in China.
Part of getting access to China is playing ball with the CCP, which means giving access to data on a whole level above the US government. It means enforcing the Great Firewall and, for example, censoring mention of the Tiannamen Square massacre.
Trade needs to be recipricoal so if China restricts access to the Chinese market, I see no issue with Western countries responding in kind.
The threat model for something like Tiktok is a whole lot worse than any Western equivalent.
The US has no rule of law for national security consideration in other countries. As a non US citizen the US government in practice has no due process consideration if they wish to spy on you, torture you, or kill you.
Corporations are an extension of the state in this process, as we have learned thanks to Edward Snowden. They have no choice but to facilitate the use of state power on foreign nationals.
As a non-American I don't see the difference for me. If you are an American all you're saying is "only my government should spy on me".
> As a non US citizen the US government in practice has no due process consideration if they wish to spy on you, torture you, or kill you.
Spy? Sort of. Generally speaking, US intelligence agencies have a lot of leeway when 1) you're not a US citizen AND 2) you're not on US soil. If either of those things isn't true then it's a different story. There are workarounds (eg outsourcing spying to allies).
Torture and kill? Huh? I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Do you mean in a war zone?
> Corporations are an extension of the state
If anything, I'd argue in the US the government is an extension of the corporations. The US government certainly acts at the behest of the capital-owning class.
> They have no choice but to facilitate the use of state power on foreign nationals.
I mean US companies are subject to US laws and that includes (as stated) pen registers, NSLs, FISA warrants, etc. Still, there's more due process here than for Chinese companies.
> If you are an American all you're saying is "only my government should spy on me".
That's not what I said at all.
What I will say is that given the choice between living in China and being subject to Chinese spying and living in the US subject to US spying I'll pick the US hands down every time.
Why? Because I can talk about US atrocities without "disappearing". I could compare the president to a cartoon character without "disappearing". The US also doesn't (currently at least) engage in ethnic cleansing and eradication through "re-education" camps (eg Tibet, Xianjiang). Nor do I have to worry about my ability to get anywhere because I said something critical of the government and took a big hit to my social credit score. And the US has no equivalent to Hong Kong's "security" laws.
> Torture and kill? Huh? I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Do you mean in a war zone?
Extraordinary rendition, "targeted killings", enhanced interrogation. The US often kills non US citizens on foreign soil without any due diligence.
> What I will say is that given the choice between living in China and being subject to Chinese spying and living in the US subject to US spying I'll pick the US hands down every time.
That's a nonsensical fallacy of choice. No one here is talking about emigration to China. We are talking about banning TikTok. The choice is between being spied on by foreign companies or by domestic companies. The correct answer is of course neither, and trying to say that being spied on by the US government is better than the Chinese government is nonsensical - if you aren't American or Chinese they are basically the same, and if you are American your own government is the only one that can opress you.
> And the US has no equivalent to Hong Kong's "security" laws.
Of course it does, it has the same standards whenever the US wants to occupy some country.
While perhaps true, it's irrelevant to THIS conversation - THIS conversation is about a Chinese company operating IN THE US. There does not need to be parity.
Wishing countries could be better actors towards foreign geopolitical interests and foreign citizens is a nice thought and a world we should work towards.
In the meantime, countries still need to act to protect their citizens and their national interests against foreign adversaries-- especially prohibiting adversarial/dangerous behavior within their own economic zones and borders.
(i.e., China also has a rational interest in restricting operations of US firms gathering information on Chinese citizens-- we don't need to choose "good" or "bad" guys).
The American governments job isn’t to look out for foreign citizens. That’s the foreign citizens governments job. This is specifically about American national security, not any other countries.
A single exabyte is enough to support Facebook's entire business operations for 5+ years. Photos, videos, posts, everything. I doubt the NSA is storing every photo on Facebook on their own servers, but it's clearly enough space to store every text message, all browsing history, all texted photos, all emails, all voicemails, all financial transactions into perpetuity for every person on the planet.
>Because when Americans “spy on” other Americans they have to abide by the fourth amendment.
Thank you, I had a good laugh: Snowden, Amazon Ring, Social Media, many many more. I sincerely hope that you do not honestly believe that Americans 'have to' abide by the fourth amendment. It's violated with ever increasing frequency and while enforcement is prevalent in some areas it is absent in others.
Can you similarly name the Chinese programs? Read about them in a free press, or at least dissident blog posts? Do you enjoy being able to discuss these things freely without worry of being arrested?
Well, I would say Social Media are unacceptable security risk instead of TikTok. Chinese gov generally can't do anything in US compared to US government, so personally I think facebook is more risky.
We need better privacy and social media reform instead of targeting tiktok. Also, why should we listen to Brendan Carr who shouldn't be able to speak for entire FCC. He is from Ajit Pai who takes lobbies from Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter. Looks like they are worried that their accomplices can't steal more data than tiktok. Lastly, the funny thing is Facebook was asking me for photo and phone number for verification which I denied.
>Chinese gov generally can't do anything in US compared to US government, so personally I think facebook is more risky.
The Economist discussed this last week:
>The bigger, underappreciated problem with TikTok is the chance it offers China to manipulate what the app’s vast foreign audience sees. TikTok has gone beyond sunny entertainment to become a major news platform. Open the app and among the songs and skits you may see Supreme Court protests or a flailing Boris Johnson. A quarter of American users say they consider TikTok to be a news source. In countries with weaker mainstream media the share is as high as 50%.
>That makes TikTok’s Chinese ownership a serious worry. The Chinese government actively meddles in domestic media; four years ago it shut down another popular ByteDance app, unamused by the subversive jokes being shared on it. TikTok’s content moderators are outside China. But the app’s algorithm is nurtured in Beijing. A tweak here or there could give more traction to videos questioning covid-19’s Chinese origin, say, or blaming nato for the war in Ukraine. Because each user gets a personalised feed, tampering would be hard to spot.
>TikTok insists no such meddling has taken place. But a company vulnerable to bullying by an authoritarian government obsessed with media manipulation is clearly a risk. Anyone who considers this paranoid should consider China’s record in Hong Kong. Without new safety mechanisms, Western countries might one day have to shut TikTok down.
On other hand Youtube manipulating what is shown is somewhat observable anyway... So it's not unique.
Maybe in general we should demand absolute neutrality from these platforms. Ban any sort of promotion of certain producers or sides. Or mandate sufficient warnings covering let's say 33% of screen when such is done. Also if there is fact checking offered it should be open to any actor.
For what seems like the 1000th time in this thread, the uniqueness is not the issue.
YouTube will manipulate you into watching more content, or maybe buying something. TikTik can, and perhaps already has, manipulate[d] you into believing (and then voting) for certain things. It's an extension of the Chinese state.
I'm not talking about manipulating people to watch more content. But promoting fake news from established players. Which have been proven to be politically corrupt.
I agree, but from where I'm sitting (Europe) the exact same thing goes for many US based companies. Not that we have an alternative, and at least you can easily get by without TikTok (I haven't even visited it, ever).
The same thing doesn't go for many US based companies.
What US law requires US companies above a certain minimal (~50 employees) size to "hire" government employees to supervise their operations at the innermost layers?
What US law makes all US corporate intellectual property and information legally owned by the government?
I think this is a dangerous move from the US. If this goes forward I can see an increasing number of countries banning all US social media. Specially since we know very well how close of a relationship they have with TSA and other US intel bodies.
Are we going to see a future where every country/economic block has their own separate social media/search engines like China and Russia?
It's is an attack on users freedom but it could also be a big economic opportunity for those who decide to foster their own internal technological ecosystem.
Tiktok is an app that, in my opinion, is only popular because SV lost interest in building social media apps for young people after Snapchat. Facebook made a (successful) play for older users but lost the youth. That's fine in the short term: Those older users have more spending power and your advertisers will appreciate that. But it does mean competitors can eat you from the "bottom up" and make you look like a Dinosaur.
1. On reading the article it seems like Tik Tok VP, Head of Public Policy has reasonably refuted all allegations with satisfactory explanation.
2. This comes conveniently at a time when Tik Tok is poised to overtake Google for search traffic in 18 to 30 age group.
As usual, the jokes on the public. No one gives a flying fuck about our privacy.
Considering that TikTok is a government controlled corporation (and all businesses in China effectively are) I don't know why anyone should be particularly inclined to trust their representations on this matter if they cannot be independently verified. It is in China's national security interest to deny the existence of any of this kind of data collection and analysis, especially in China.
I wonder if people could accept their personal/private data is a good/service if the government established it in law. So far this has been dealt with as an ethical/moral thing - thinking of ethics review boards in research. Though the low-lying “legal fruit” is probably just EULA regulation and enforcement.
In another few years if continue to see such polarisation, the Internet will be much more fragmented. Not just China vs the World. It will be China, Russia, India, USA and to some extent Europe, African and South American nations.
It's perfectly fine for our governments and corporations to work together to collect our data.
Western ethics dictate that its NOT ok for Eastern governments and corporations to work together and collect our data. That's a security risk.
For the individual, the analysis is clear. All government involvement is a security risk. The are all immoral, and seek ever greater control and power.
This is nothing about security (either represents an insecure position for the individual). This is about which government has greater power and control over individuals.
Good old protectionism. Really nothing new to see here.
And let’s be honest, the Chinese are guilt of the same stuff.
It looks like the long age of globalization is going into a pause now.
Thankyou @dang for allowing this conversation. I appreciate your desire for inquisitive civilized debate
Which inversely correlates with the importance of the debate to the participants. We see it in this thread
But I don't want to avoid important topics to people for the sake of civility, rather I would like, as is happening here, for those topics to become the best places for people to learn inquisitive engagement
Weird, i'd have hoped they'd regulate the entire market, not just tiktok because it is chinese.. a huge missed opportunity, almost some sort of racism over here, even though the word is very strong, i feel like targeting certain kind of people is weird to me, why just TikTok?.. now that i think about it, what other social media is foreign? that's an interesting question
several people here arguing that data collection by CN via TT is worse than by US via FB b/c CN is totalitarian. but wouldn't I as a privacy conscious person prefer my data to be collected rather by a foreign agency not cooperating with the domestic agencies? or to put it bluntly - why would I as a German care about what China knows about me?
The US uses "security risk" as an excuse to force TikTok to store data and code on US servers, so they can collect this data and learn how TikTok works and has become so successful.
Now that they have what they need, they use the same excuse for market protectionism, trying to remove TikTok so US alternatives can take its place.
Surely the biggest problem with any social media is the ability to influence it's users and promote or demote certain content more than the data collection in itself. We should probably be careful allowing any other nation having the potential to influence public opinion if the last few years are anything to go on.
I don't follow this at all. I agree that TikTok should probably be removed from App Stores, but they are not doing anything that Facebook is not also doing. If you remove one, you have to remove the other.
To me, it sounds like our government is just trying to play favorites with domestic evildoers.
Imagine >50% of US teenagers were highly engaged with the CCP's education program, an explicit surveillance and propaganda tool.
Now instead imagine that TT decreased the ranking of content by 10% that went against the agenda of the CCP. Users, the government, and creators never know.
I think if USA can access chinese data it is a fair game. But one way data traffic, one way influence … it will kill USA in the long term. If information is important any one way street even if one put in sone caution protection is still one way.
Every year more young people reach voting age. Soon(now?) banning TikTok will be politically infeasible, at least until the natural tide of social media makes it unpopular.
I think TikTok's competition with Alphabet and Meta for digital ad space is healthy for market but security is the most important for users. At the end TikTok will be open sourced because there is no other way to guarantee 100% security instead of going full open source.
I remember Bill Gates once said in one of his interviews that Microsoft showed the source code of Microsoft Windows to various governments around the world in order for them to review it because they were afraid of NSA surveillance. Maybe that's the way for TikTok instead of going full open source but who knows.
In the article the TikTok spokesperson explains this:
“It’s not logging what you’re typing. It’s an anti-fraud measure that checks the rhythm of the way people are typing to ensure it’s not a bot or some other malicious activity.”
Your typing cadence may be another bit of identifying personal info. Not to mention they could be lying or "not know" what their tech is really doing. Wouldn't be the first time.
They also have access to a lot of other metadata (IMEI, IP address, OS version, MAC address, email/phone number that you signed up with, etc) that they could combine with data from brokers to identify you as well.
I'm not saying that they should be collecting this data, to be clear, just that, from everything I've read, it doesn't seem like they are doing anything uniquely untoward. I'm hoping there's something I'm missing.
> it doesn't seem like they are doing anything uniquely untoward.
I think it's best to assume if it can be used against you, it will.
That's why we pushed back on Apple's CSAM plans to scan images on the device.
Does anyone remember how we even know TikTok is tracking keystrokes? It's because Apple updated their security to notify users when the clipboard was activated by the app, and TikTok was doing it for every keystroke.
Security a part the occidental world need to protect his market from unfair competition. If Facebook is blocked on china why we have to make TikTok prosper?
At the risk of sounding like one of those crazy internet kooks, social media has been the greast psyops experiment known to man. The CIA has tried manipulating the populations of foreign nations since its creation, but could never have dreamed of something as effective as social media. Only problem for US folks, it has been much more effective against US citizens. It's so effective, the masses think you're a nutter for even mentioning it. The people are being played with emotionally like toys at the whim of anyone that wants to play.
China would never, ever, ever allow US companies to have direct influence over their media, so even by basic tit-for-tat rules, this is reasonable.
Moreover, even from a 'trade' perspective, if China does not allow such social media apps from US over there, which denies US companies that Ad revenue, the same should be applied in reverse. No sense in letting TT get Ad revenue, it should go to some entity playing by the same rules US, Europe, Japan etc.
It's not even hypocrisy, they believe there are not bad things but only bad people doing it. Like in the Harry Potter book where slavery is not bad per se, only when done by bad people. If Harry Potter owns a slave that's fine because Harry is good.
The legal reasons are legit. 'Foreign Governments' are not 'Our Government' and of course China is not the US. That matters.
I suggest that the 'deal' should likely involved localized data and internal controls, with oversight, so that the CCP just doesn't have operational access to the data.
Companies at a certain scale have regulatory requirements, it's just like in other industries.
This will quickly fall below the fold, but: TikTok saved my life.
It woke me up to a profoundly different worldview than the one we've been raised with in the west. That's what this is really about, not privacy. Or more precisely, yes security is a concern, but I can't believe that's the only reason, because we've all been lied to so many times that all I hear now is the establishment crying wolf.
I think content platforms recommendation algoriths should be regulated and be open for scientific and mental health review.
I mean here brilliant computer engineers build content platforms that are virally additive to the brain. The platforms track every users movement and decision, yet there is zero regulation! What could possibly go wrong here?
> but the annoying part is that the same rules don't get applied across
Yeah! Why do I have to sponsor hires who happen to be not legal citizen. I have to hop all these hops to hire while your local grocery store doesn't have to sponsor anyone! So annoying /s obviously
Just the tail wagging the dog. Little c conservatives, including neoliberal democrats, are chomping at the bit to prevent a non-US company from controlling social media because they’re using it as a tracking system via the NSA and for the dual purpose of propaganda since Facebook’s Chief Exo Officer is friendly and/or “very friendly” with several authoritarians in both major parties.
They don’t want the possibility that another country could be doing this, even though there’s no evidence China is doing this, like Snowden unleashed for the USA. They could solve this with a law requiring data on US citizens be stored in the USA but then that’ll fuck up 5 eyes agreements for them and they can’t have that.
Personally: burn them all down, I would be fine with this happening because we need to eliminate all social media, period.
I would be more concerned that a country that does not like America now has a direct line of communication with virtually every American with a cell phone under 20 now.
Turkey is a member of a military alliance with the United States and sources parts from other NATO members as well. If they were not a part of NATO, the U.S. would have little or no say about who they sold drones to. I think if you asked Turkey they would probably rather remain in NATO.
Come on you guys don't think the US has made a deal with ByteDance during the Trump years. US data most likely will go through US owned data cables the NSA can spy on. The rest is just fud to make sure the next social media app will be a US one.
Are media apps and their data collection policies even under the FCC's purview? This seems like an FTC thing at best.
As far as I can tell, this is just some random commissioner (who also wants to get rid of net neutrality and Section 230) making a political statement, and nothing more. Yes, you should be worried about big companies collecting your data. Yes, you should be worried that the CCP has a direct line to VERY influenceable kids. Both of these are legal; the first amendment guarantees the right to publish propaganda that is potentially bad for national security. If you want to stop propaganda, start investing in education, Congress.
I don't see how TikTok is doing anything out of the ordinary here and why they should be specifically targeted. Everyone is doing the same things they're doing. I get that the US is scared that China is going to replace them as "the superpower". Getting rid of some social media app is not going to change that. We're closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. We lost this battle decades ago, and it's too late to stop it.
I really feel like this is a token stance against China and not a whole lot else. They won't stop buying our soybean exports if we take a hard line against TikTok, whereas they would if we took a hard line stance against stealing American intellectual property or invading Taiwan, which is the problem we're actually worried about. So nothing changes, but when Commissioner Carr runs for some political office (his term is up next year, and I'm guessing Biden isn't going to re-appoint him), he has some token "I did a thing" to point to. (And knowing his political affiliation, "I hurt people that aren't white" is probably a good selling point for his candidacy. Sad that such a thing is true in 2022.)
If someone wants to do something about this, Congress should make some laws. "It's illegal at the federal level to bypass device privacy protections to sell ads." or "It's illegal for a US company to help law enforcement track users." or "We don't import goods from countries that have concentration camps that kill ethnic minorities." This will never happen. Congress loves it when companies bypass device protections to sell ads, and they demand that companies like Apple break the security on their devices to aid law enforcement.
Finally, if the FCC really wanted Apple and Google to delete an app from the app store, I doubt that posting a poorly-researched rant to Twitter would be how they go about doing it. I'd be surprised if Tim and Sundar even read this letter.
I think a part that is missing from the "national security" aspect is not just the data harvesting, in particular what you can do with it: manipulate the narrative.
Maximize division, influence elections, spread misinformation, censorship, the like. Already happening in US-owned social networks, imagine what China can do on a China-owned network.
Of course not. Every government is going to look out for themselves. Following your reasoning, look at China. They have their own playbook for operating within China, and it is quite restrictive. They make it harder for foreign entities to do business within China.
From a geopolitical viewpoint this makes complete sense. You don't want your rival to have a backdoor into influencing/manipulating/discovering how people in your nation are behaving, especially when you consider how much data about sensitive information might be getting onto tiktok, like videos made by military service members on bases, videos showing gaps/issues/etc in infrastructure, or at ports and other locations.
As for me, I'm an American and it is in my best interests that USA stays top dog. I didn't immigrate here to downgrade lol, so I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player.
> I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player
Are you sure? Several months ago I've woke up to learn, that my country start to kill civilians of other country with bombs, missiles and shelling, to become "top player". And, what is even worse, many of my fellow citizens support it.
Now I'm trying to leave this country for some other, which don't have ambitions to be top-player but don't kill civilians and don't attack malls and hospitals.
I personally don't care and the rules don't forbid it. I wondered what you wrote, translated it online and thought I'd post it here to save others a few clicks :)
Avec la technologie actuelle, nous devrions pouvoir parler dans la langue de notre choix sans problème.
I don't think it's against the rules at all; we had a thread a couple weeks ago which ended up being mostly in German. We native speakers enjoy the privilege of reading English nearly every where we go online, it should be no skin off our back to pop open Google Translate every once in a while.
An occasional comment in another language is fine but HN is an English-language site, so people shouldn't be having entire conversations in other languages.
As a speaker of multiple languages, I disagree. There's no possibility of HN turning into a non-English language site just because a few threads are not in English; HN will always be first and foremost an English language site (and it's too long set in English for it to be anything but), and it's actually quite nice to be reminded of the existence of other conversations by other language speakers rather than only English. I and many others may not be able to participate so directly in them, but there's always Google Translate.
Hi, Norwegian here, so English is my second language. Sorry no. If there are other-language comments, I just skip them. The reason is UX and time. If you're too lazy to run your other-language comment through Google Trans or similar, then you'll just end up having fewer readers. Meanwhile you just end up annoying those who want to fluently read the discussions without having to stop and run things through a translator every other post. This makes other-language posts bad for HN's business. I mean consider if I just switched to my own language for no reason at all. Haha, da må du kjøre greia gjennom Google Trans eller lignende, og fordi jeg skriver dialekt så er det likevel ikke sikkert at alt blir oversatt riktig lol. Actually the translation for that last sentence came out surprisingly well, but it's not like you'd know anyway.
I'm not a native speaker, but I understand English better than German or Russian. Sometimes it makes sense to write something in other languages, sometimes it doesn't. It should be a matter of common sense and politeness more than about the rules.
I remember going to a computer club talk by Woz where a significant portion (certainly the important parts) of the conversation were all in 6502 assembler. I was so lost, and at the same time inspired.
> Now I'm trying to leave this country for some other, which don't have ambitions to be top-player but don't kill civilians and don't attack malls and hospitals.
Good luck man, there aren't many such countries. I live in slovenia, we're like tiny, point a finger at putin and meanwhile have soldiers in syria.
Loosely speaking, probably not right now. A lot of countries avoid war because they are worried about the potential response from the United States. With an isolationist-focused US that isn't the dominant military power (in order for the US to not be the dominant power it'll have to undertake more isolationist tendencies like reducing military spending) there's nothing to fear from invading your neighbor.
But this is just an examination of practical reality. Ideally we wouldn't have a hegemon. Ideally maybe we wouldn't have countries either.
The wildly different allocation of resources and population (on a country border basis) suggests some country will always have the means to be hegemonic (especially if other contenders all decide not to be).
Which in practice means there will always be a hegemony.
If the US ceded its role tomorrow, China would step into it. If China ceded it the day after, Russia or the EU would step into it. (I'm skipping over India and Japan, as both seem to have cultural aversions to strongly projecting power overseas)
This is laughable. The US initiated way too many wars and other offensive / disruptive actions. If you call this stability then I have a bridge to sell. The only stability it provides is it's own. Well maybe some to the allies.
The US Navy ensures that global shipping routes stay open and safe, the US economy provides the globe with advanced technological research and products, and the US's natural resources allow for it to export tons of commodities including food and energy.
During pax americana, we've seen massive increases in quality of life around the world. Do you think the world is going to be more stable as the US retreats and other players fill the power vacuum and we have to deal with the rising threat of climate change?
I think the world will be more stable when there are few major players around with not a single one having complete control / dominance. This will insure competition and cooperation between our "masters" and will keep them on their toes.
I do not want to argue too much here. Here is my point of view - I believe that a single country controlling the world will end up with dictatorship on a world scale. It will not prevent wars either. If instead we have few majors they might actually get to their senses and establish some workable order.
You have your own take on a subject and we do not have to agree
I appreciate your desire for the world to be ruled by the US. I do not think the rest of the world will agree. And if you enforce it using military means you are no better then the rest. Are you American by any chance?
I think if the choice is China or America, the majority of the world would choose America. America is less hostile to other countries than China.
Do you think the world would rather have China in charge?
I assume you are going to claim that we can either have no major power or that the EU could be that major power. I highly doubt either of those could occur.
I believe some wars can be just and as such enforcing things through the military can be just. The idea that military use has to be bad is ridiculous.
>Replying here since reply to your last post is not available.
Typically when that happens I have to click the time posted on a post and then I have the option to reply. Not sure what causes that.
>I prefer the world "ruled" by few major entities / blocks. No need to be either US or China alone.
I don't think that is possible.
Do you have any historical examples where this has happened? Please don't bring up a time when there were multiple major powers but they were so far away they couldn't reach the other, assuming they even knew the other existed.
If you do not have any examples of this occurring, why do you think it would work in the present?
>Like bombing the country that refuses to trade in certain currency?
I am not suggesting that the US has only done good and just things. Only that the US is better than China.
China is currently taking over Hong Kong (despite having a 50 year agreement for autonomy starting in 1997), attempting to take land from India, trying to dam a river that provides water to India, is consistently threatening Taiwan, etc. China does the same crap. And all of that is within the last few years. If you want to go back further we can.
I would also note several of the US invasions were not in fact US invasion but NATO invasions. This likely means one of those blocks of country you support to be a world power were involved with these invasions.
Let's talk about internal affairs. China has a terrible record and potentially holds the record for causing the most deaths of its own citizens. Obviously they don't care about the people. What about freedom? Do Chinese citizens have more freedom than US citizens? Why would China treat people who are not its own citizens better than the citizens?
The US is better for the world and the people under its control than China.
>"The US is better for the world and the people under its control than China"
Once again you are pushing a choice that should not be there in a first place. I do not want to choose between either. Period. If you let any country run free and control the others it will devolve to a dictator. So I prefer to have the US, Europe, China, BRICS and whatever else is coming.
Do you have any historical examples where this has happened? Please don't bring up a time when there were multiple major powers but they were so far away they couldn't reach the other, assuming they even knew the other existed.
I believe it is temporary. China is massively build up their military and are consistently threatening their neighbors. I believe it is just a matter of time until war occurs.
Also, you are advocating for more than 2 blocks. As far as I can tell there are only two super powers right now.
MAD, as insane as it may sound, actually works. Everyone being fearful of massive retaliatory strikes keeps everyone in line. You get all sorts of bad behavior when nations have no fear of massive retaliatory strikes.
The world map has been mostly frozen the last few decades precisely because USA is the global hegemon and world police.
Regional powers (which is what we would devolve to) are demonstrating exactly what the world would look like without America running the show: conquest and genocide in Ukraine, saber rattling in the south china sea, genocide of the Kurds.
We don't have an interest in solving for all the world's ills, and we are the source of many.
But the world has been less stable and more dangerous in the past.
If you think the world is stable as a result of the US, you should think again. It is exactly the contrary. The US itself is involved in wars since basically its foundation. The reason you say this is because you probably live in the US or one of its rich close alies. Everyone else will tell you that life under US hegemony means constant wars, coups, and political instability.
Could you give some examples? The US has certainly abused its power (notoriously, in the 60s and 70s at the height of the Cold War), but "constant" appears to be stretching historical fact to fit a narrative.
Are you forgetting that the US has been actively involved in non-stop wars around the world for the last 20 years? And before these wars started, it was doing "special operations" in eastern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa? And in Latin America it never really stoped its coups, military dictatorships and the such, especially in central America. And then of course there was the "cold" war and all the crimes in South Asia...
Look at the hundred years before that. Everyone was fighting, all the time, not just one country with roughly one skirmish (by historical standards) at any single point.
All nations are, at heart, "evil" in this regard. Essentially, nations are just scaled up street gangs with more destructive weapons.
The only proven method of keeping these street gangs from getting too far out of hand, of keeping all our war at the level of low intensity conflict, is MAD. Nations behave only at the barrel of a gun. To argue that America is "evil" is as irrelevant as it is to argue that America is "good".
For instance, I know that all nations can be said to be "evil" at root, and "good" at root. Here's the thing though, do you think it matters to me if China is "evil" and "good"? Of course not, they're just a different street gang. The US has a responsibility to humanity to keep them in line. Should it matter to China that the US street gang is "evil" and "good"? No. They have a responsibility to humanity to keep the US in line.
In the age of weapons of mass destruction, only mutually assured destruction has ensured these street gangs don't come into conflict. Relying on sunshine and rainbows and unicorns that crap out skittles is nonsense. This is not a children's game of "good guys-bad guys". There are no good guys or bad guys. Only nations, (street gangs), pursuing interests. They are kept in line only at the barrel of a gun. Take that gun away and they will run rampant.
I mostly agree with you, except I don't believe that MAD is a sufficient deterrent, or that low level conflict is unlikely to evolve into large scale war.
The best way, in my mind to minimize conflict is through a global monopoly on violence, one street gang to rule them all
The reason the US and Russia haven't run rampant the last 30 years is because the US and Russia can blow each other away. So Russia satisfies itself with Georgia and now Ukraine. And the US satisfies itself with those nations in the MidEast region. Remove Russia, and the US would have been all over the yard. Remove the US, and Russia would have been all over the yard.
And now with the rise of China, mankind is even safer. Not only that, but more of mankind have begun to enjoy the benefits of safety. The US and Russia were perfectly willing to fight a proxy war in Korea 70 years ago. They wouldn't dare do that today. Why? The Chinese presence in any MAD calculations.
Today Africa is much safer, it is developing much faster. A large part of the reason for that is the presence of China. Now instead of proxy wars, the great powers compete to see who can deliver Africa the most undersea bandwidth for instance. This is a much better situation for Africans than the situation that existed when only the US and Russia were superpowers. And this situation exists because of MAD. It proves that an armed society is a polite society.
The US, China and Russia are all fulfilling their responsibility to keep the peace by maintaining lethal arsenals of weapons of mass destruction so that they are each confident in their own ability to destroy the others. And that is good for all of us "little people" in the world. Whether we are American, Chinese or Russian. (And even good for us if we are Korean, African, or from South America.)
I agree. The result of N. Korea acquiring nuclear weapons was the cessation of the idea of direct war against the Korean regime. I believe if Iran already had nukes we wouldn't be talking about the possibility of war there, either.
The difficult calculus with Iran is trying to decide if they're actually pious enough to immolate themselves to take out Israel. Or whether a group could come to power who might be.
North Korea is insane in its own way, but hereditary personality cults do have a history of acting in the interest of self-preservation.
Russia specifically developed their "de-escalation" policy of tactical nuclear weapons use under MAD assumptions.
Basically, betting that there were scenarios where the US wouldn't risk escalation to nuclear war in response to a calibrated Russian tactical nuclear strike in a third party country, thus allowing Russian nuclear effects to nullify superior western precision weapons without consequence.
A) NATO's air campaign in the Kosovo War (1999) certainly scared the shit out of Russia.
B) That Russia is currently bombarding Ukrainian cities with repurposed surface to air missiles doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in their ability to produce sufficient quantities of precision missiles for even a moderate scale conflict.
C) The majority of Ukrainian platforms at this point still aren't Western, and thus incapable of firing NATO precision ordinance.
It's sad but not surprising that you think that the US did not promote, finance, or execute dictatorships and all kinds of destabilizing tactics against democratically elected governments for the sole reason of not agreeing with their policies. They even sent agents to my country to teach the military how to torture civilians.
The only difference is that they were careful to not do it directly, or do it in secret. Exactly the same way they are doing in Ukraine now, where they avoid giving the weapons directly to Ukraine, but instead they use the well exercised muscle of influence.
Ukraine is a terrible example. Russia started that, not Ukraine or the US. Giving weapons and funding it would have been completely absent without Russian aggression.
Promoting a better way for countries to adopt, partnering with them in economic activity and education, and helping them to defend themselves when neighbors try to use aggression to oppose that partnership is a much better mechanism for bettering the world than outright war and conquering other nations.
Does the US do shady stuff that bites them later? Yes. Is the world overall better with the US as one of the biggest out there for now? Also yes. Both things can be true.
By all means shine a light on, and oppose the shady stuff but don't make the mistake of thinking that the world doesn't need a strong entity who can both promote and also defend better ways to govern.
Yeah, we do a bunch of fucked up shit, like fueling the civil war in Yemen, the banana wars, and much, much more.
We're less extractive than the alternative, and the US having an effective monopoly on violence has been a stabilizing force.
Europeans really don't deserve a voice in this whole conversation given that they rely entirely on the US for protection. Germany's decision to build Nord Stream 2 demonstrates how detached they are from realpolitik.
There are plenty of regional powers that aren't particularly violent or unstable; the traditional concern--regardless of whether it's true--isn't that the US itself would devolve into chaos, it's that by suddenly ceasing to be able to project force in other countries, it would leave power vacuums.
>what the world would look like without America running the show: conquest and genocide in Ukraine, saber rattling in the south china sea, genocide of the Kurds.
Meanwhile with America running the show: entire regions - South America and Middle East - largely destroyed, with tens of millions of victims.
America isn’t the “world police”, they are just the main bully.
The strongest argument for the US destroying South America, aside from the obvious propping up of strong men, is probably training and supporting right-wing militias to combat communism.
The effect of their existence as a power base then cascading into politics, etc.
That said, most of South America's recent woes have generally been economic (Guatamala, Venezuela), and the rise of Chavez (and the US not directly acting against his movement for decades) undercuts the "US is responsible for what happens in South America" position.
How is he suppose to make a change? Go to prison? Is your country actively provide asylum for non-celebrities Russian political immigrants and their families?
When Putin captured all the power in the country, rigged the elections, killed journalists no one cared at all. US, EU, UK, etc - no reaction at all. War with Georgia - no reaction.
When Russia actually started this war 8 years ago and annexed Crimea there been really weak reaction and after everyone just did business as usual. EU even sold Kremlin equipment to fight protesters as well as military weapons on condition they will only be used "inside the country".
When Russian opposition leader Navalny was poisoned again no real sanctions were introduced. Now US, EU and UK expect people to go on streets and protest.
PS: I am from Russia and I immigrated to Turkey on 25th of February and there is nothing fun about going into unplanned political immigration. I dont try to remove all responsibility from myself or someone else, but even I as software engineer have very limited capacity to do political activity. Since I have a job and my family to feed.
Now from abroad I help my friends from Ukraine when I can and I publicly share my political statementa that will land me to prison if I ever come back. But sorry I'm not going to destroy my life for the cause.
> When the war began, the population of Russia had become divided between those who supported this war, those who did not even care, and those who opposed to the war. I'll speak about first two categories later, so now's about the last one (so-called sensible people).
> When the war began, some sensible Russian people had stated that they were ashamed to be a Russians. Others had stated that they were not responsible for Putin's actions, because he was always a usurper and they were always against him. I think the both sides are wrong. On the one side, it is foolish to be ashamed of your nationality, just as to be proud of it, because the origin of a person does not depend on his will. Only your actions can be a sources of your pride or shame. On the other side, unlike the legal responsibility that may be personal only, moral responsibility may be both personal and collective. Personal responsibility is a responsibility for own acts that constitute the objective aspect of a crime. Collective responsibility is incurred when a persons have not done all measures within their power to avoid the situation in which the crime is committed on behalf of society of which these persons are a part.
> Just some examples. Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov are not responsible for this war, because they resisted Putin's regime, fought for Russian civil society, and, as a result, gave their lives. Alexei Navalny is alive but he survived an assassination attempt, was imprisoned and is still fighting Putin's regime, so he is not responsible for this war. Yuri Nesterenko is not responsible for this war too, because he distanced himself from Russian society in advance, stating in 2010 that Russia was always absolute and pure evil growing out of mentality of Russians, and he had for ever left Russia and was granted asylum in USA.
> Quite simply, if you want to avoid the collective responsibility you should stake your life on the line fighting for your society and become a hero or sever all ties with your society in advance and become an outcast.
> As for me personally, I have not severed all ties with Russian society and I'm alive and even not jailed. Therefore, I share collective responsibility for all what is going on now.
> My beliefs have evolved, and there are some things seemed right earlier but not seem right now. I was constant in one thing – in categorical opposition to Putin's regime. I always believed that the expression of discontent is not enough, because words don't change the world. I carried out actions using all tools available to me. I was a lawyer (even good, in opinion of some people) and tried to uphold the law, rights and freedoms, not just as a representative of a party to the proceedings – for money, but also on my own behalf – for an idea. Fight for an idea has brought nothing but problems; however, I knew what I was about. I wasn't naive man, I saw dictatorship, a priori incompatible with justice, was being established in Russia, but at that time I felt obliged to use all available legal arrangements. However, in 2020, after the amendments to the Russian Constitution was approved, I realized that I finally had enough. The country where the law was replaced by schizophrenic delusion of psychotic führer, really doesn't need lawyers, and, under these circumstances, I considered it shameful to continue to pretend that well-written legal document has any meaning. I saw that elections, mass protests, petitions, legal proceedings didn't work. I saw that attempts to change the situation through a violence against government structures (see this) did not work too, because it didn't resonate with society. I don't know what I should do now to change the situation. Anyway I realize that all things what I did earlier were inefficient - I haven't prevented the transformation my country into fascist dictatorship. And so, again, I share collective responsibility for all what is going on now.
>"Collective responsibility is incurred when a persons have not done all measures within their power to avoid the situation in which the crime is committed on behalf of society of which these persons are a part."
Cut the crap. We are all part of a single society - people of the earth. Follow your logic we should be doing nothing else but trying to stop the world acting the way it does. The atrocities are everywhere. I would not be able to sleep and function at all if I've felt that "collective" responsibility. This is not how humans work.
This comment seems in bad faith. I think it’s pretty clear this conversation wasn’t about killing civilians so the comment about “whatever necessary” probably wasn’t intended to include violations of the Geneva convention. Just saying.
“Whatever” is by definition ambiguous. It might include violence, sure, but when the comment specifically mentioned data and the actual content at hand several times, it can be pretty safely concluded that it doesn’t include violence.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that “whatever it needs” at the very least includes things the country is already doing, and violence is definitely in that list. Both internally and externally.
I mean, we have a number of examples of governments using this data to do anything from harassing to imprisoning or even assassinating dissidents. So even saying "just" access to data is what you're defending doesn't really address the fact that data is often used for oppressive and violent ends.
Personally I find it rewarding how the accuracy of language matters here on HN. Initially when someone voted down one of my comments I was all butt-hurt. Then I got to realizing how justified the down-vote was as I was being lazy with my use of language - I was not actually saying what I really meant. Slowly it helped me think first then write what I actually meant. Still not perfect, but so much more intentional. After all, many of us here on HN are coders of one sort or another, where the accuracy of (computer) language is all too important. It should matter no less how accurately we talk with one another?
At least they "think" that they're maintaining their status. Check back at mid-century when things _really_ start to fall apart and see where the US and those who control it are.
First, this ignores that the USA benefits tremendously from trading with other countries, most of all with China. If this mindset was applied universally, the USA (and the world) would be worse off. It also ignores that treating countries as though they are enemies can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can increase the threat rather than decrease it.
Second, it's not necessarily in one's best interest to live in a "top dog" country. There are plenty of happy and prosperous people living outside the USA. The USA ranks 26th for median wealth. To give another example, even if China took the top dog spot, the average US citizen would still be better off than the average Chinese citizen.
Thirdly, I don't think the US remaining top dog is a realistic objective in the long term. In my opinion, it would be smarter to lead by example knowing that your successor will be judged by the standard you set.
Wealth is also a function of age - older people tend to have more - and that ranking is not normalized by such extraneous factors.
The US is number 2 by median income, and number 1 for median disposable income, both of which are pretty important, especially to younger people that want cash flow to enjoy life.
Apparently what I meant above is discretionary income, which would include all fundamental bills/payments such as healthcare etc. Disposable income does not include those, it only includes income plus direct payments from the government.
What would interest me is discretionary income, which includes healthcare, mortgages etc. plus education, public transport, daycare, energy and I'm possibly forgetting some fundamental things.
"Disposable" is very much misleading here. If you have 1000$ "disposable" income but you still have to pay for or cannot afford all of the mentioned things then you are in worse shape than someone who has 500$ "disposable" income but can lean on public infrastructure and subsidies for those things. The difference can be quite massive.
The reason I'm specifically suspicious of the US here is that public infrastructure seems to be quite a bit behind and fundamental things like healthcare is substantially more expensive than in some of the most developed countries.
The numbers on the GP's page include the value of government benefits. If you exclude the European social benefits, their median disposable income is even lower.
>The following table represents data from OECD's "median disposable income per person" metric, which includes all forms of income as well as taxes and transfers in kind from governments for benefits such as healthcare and education and is equivalised by dividing by the square root of household size. This metric, in addition to using a median rather than a mean, uses "data calculated according to the new OECD terms of reference"; compared to previous terms of reference, these "include a more detailed breakdown of current transfers received and paid by households as well as a revised definition of household income, including the value of goods produced for own consumption as an element of self-employed income." As OECD displays median disposable incomes in each country's respective currency, the values were converted here using the World Bank's PPP conversion factors, accounting for each country's cost of living in the year that the disposable median income was recorded. Unless noted otherwise, all data refers to 2019. Data are in United States dollars at current prices and current purchasing power parity for private consumption for the reference year.
All these statistics suffer from the inequality in the US. I guess that if you take total disposable income the number 1 is correct. But if you go look at the reality, it is a minority that controls that total disposable income, while most of the population lives paycheck to paycheck and increasingly don't have money even to buy food.
People don't seem to understand that median is not a measure that is much better than mean, especially in the case of high inequality. For example, if I take all the money from the 40% poorer population and distribute it to the 40% richer population, the median is still the same. If you don't believe, just compute the mean and median of these two sequences:
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
[0,0,0,0,5,6,11,11,11,11]
Another example that I know fully well is Brazil: the mean is 8,560 BRL and the median is 8,220 BRL for monthly salaries, that is, very close. But these monthly salaries are known to vary widely from 2,170 BRL (USD 417) to 38,200 BRL (USD 7349), so hardly anyone is really making 8220 or close to that.
>People don't seem to understand that median is not a measure that is much better than mean, especially in the case of high inequality.
Yes, they do. I am a PhD mathematician with decades of work using these tools. I am quite clear on the meanings and shortcoming of all sorts of indicators. I am also aware how real world data trends instead of cooked up examples that don't match reality.
Median is a common value used by economists precisely because it more likely shows what a person makes as opposed to the mean, especially in cases of high inequality.
> If you don't believe
Yes, you can make up all sorts of nonsense. Not a single country follows the distributions you made up.
>Another example that I know fully well is Brazil:
You conclusion does not at all follow from your claim. Or from the actual data.
> so hardly anyone is really making [the median] or close to that
Well, by definition, over half of people make the median or more. Is that hardly anyone?
If you look at the data [1] (income by decile in Brazil), besides the 50% making median income or higher, another 30% of the people make within 30% of median. That leaves 20% of the people making under 70% of the median income.
What is your definition of "hardly anyone"?
Look at the data. Clearly median is much more accurate than mean for explaining how much people make, as this example showed.
The two examples show exactly the problem of the median: it is not that different from the mean in many situation when we talk about salaries and incomes. Now, if you start using the percentiles as you're doing here, then you are looking deeper into the data and your results get more accurate and reflective of reality, which just proves my point.
>The two examples show exactly the problem of the median: it is not that different from the mean in many situation when we talk about salaries and incomes
???
Did you compute them? do you know how?
The Brazil data I just posted has median around 1383, mean of 2308.36, which is 65% larger.
An interesting test: compute with details the median and mean of the data I just posted. I already gave you the answers. I think you don't understand these terms.
That you don't like the outcome of the most two commonly used indicators is not the fault of the indicators - it's the result of you wanting to put things in the data that are not there.
Your claim about Brazil having "hardly anyone", which I showed was nonsense, shows exactly what you're trying to do - put things in data that simply are not there (and in the case of your claim, are mathematically invalid no matter the income distribution).
>Now, if you start using the percentiles as you're doing here, then you are looking deeper into the data
Percentiles have the exact same graph as dollars, or pesos, or anything you desire.
% = exact$ / total $.
So they have the exact same graph, merely a different label. Do you understand this? The % of total income versus income shows nothing different, there is no "deeper into the data" or "more accurate and reflective of reality" for this.
It's simply scaling ALL the numbers by a constant. No one changes place. No income compared to another changes in ratio. There is no subtle nuance pulled out of anywhere.
>which just proves my point.
Is your point that you don't know what any of these terms mean? Then yes, you proved your point. Mean, median, percent, ratio, decile, all the terms related to income - you have screwed them all up beyond reason.
Don't bother replying until you answer the questions I poste last time:
Do you admit 50% of people in Brazil make median income or more? What amount of people did you mean by "hardly anyone"?
Also answer: is the graph of income by % the same geometric shape as income by $, or yen, or peso, or any currency you care to pick, thereby giving no "looking deeper into the data"?
> Do you admit 50% of people in Brazil make median income or more?
You're pretending to not understand what I said. The figure for median income of 8K is very different from what most people make in Brazil, because a lot of people will make less than that, and a lot make more than that. So, the median has little value, because there is just a small group that makes close to that figure compared to the other groups that make more or less. It is a society with large inequality that is polarized on the two sides, instead of concentrating on the middle. My point is that this measure is more useful for societies that have more equality, such as a few countries in Europe. For the US, the median is less and less useful to get a clear picture.
>You're pretending to not understand what I said. The figure for median income of 8K is very different from what most people make in Brazil, because a lot of people will make less than that, and a lot make more than that
I see you've moved from "hardly any" to "a lot". Nice goal post move. I bet if you look at the actual data enough you might get to what the data shows.
The majority of people, for every country for which there is data, are close to the median income. End of story. You so far have posted so many simple math errors that it's hard to know where you got your understanding of these things.
> It is a society with large inequality that is polarized on the two sides, instead of concentrating on the middle.
There is no such country. Don't believe me? You can check this yourself:
[1] has all the data to check. Select the datasets showing income share. Select them, pick years, say 2016-2021. Download the CSV. There are 114 countries in the dataset for which all 5 quintiles of income are available for recent years.
For each compute the median. Then look at how close the middle 60% of the people are to the median.
If you really want to see that distributions are not what you believe, graph every single one. If you need tools, jupyterlab using python, pandas, and matplotlib make this task pretty easy.
In EVERY single one you will find the majority of people are decently close to the median. I just checked. Do it yourself so you stop believing all this mystical non-existent income distribution where people are not majority near the median.
I know you're convinced there are income distributions like those you made up, but there simply are not. It is empirical fact.
So, if you want to continue to claim what you are - do what I told you to do, pick the country you think best supports your claim, and post the actual data.
Until then you are simply wrong.
This is why economists, even those working in inequality, start with the median income when discussing income. It is the best point indicator of what the majority of people in a society earn.
The US is way down the list at 120 for income equality, worse than most of the "developed world". That median hides a lot in a country of over 320 million.
The US also has just about the richest poor in the world - so if reducing inequality means making the poor demonstrably poorer, is that a good solution?
Last I checked, poverty line in the US is at the 85th percentile in world income.
And most importantly, most of that inequality and poverty levels are what are called pre-tax-transfer: they do not account the value given the poor and lower incomes via benefits, which lowers a lot of that inequality (and makes our poor even richer than most of the planet).
For fun, pick a country that you think is better for lower income people, and let's look into it :)
Inequality is relative. Absolute income means a significant amount, even more so to the poor.
Out of curiosity, where did you get these numbers from? I’m not from the US, but what I do read and see on the internet is that people in the US also have a lot of debt (education, medical, and of course credit) I’m surprised that even for median disposable the US is number 1. But then again, maybe it’s a case of the internet being drowned out by a vocal minority?
Rich people have more debt than poor people because they have more ability to repay. The only way debt could truly signify one country is worse off than another is if the situation were unstable (people accumulating debt in a short-term crisis and they will not be able to repay).
I was also surprised, but it seems to be true. Wikipedia lists the median disposable income after adjusting for local prices (PPP), and USA is first on that list.
That metric probably doesn't factor in cost of living, cost of education, cost of healthcare, etc. The US isn't particularly young. But regardless, I didn't mean that the US was not a good place to live. It does extremely well on most metrics. My point was that there are many countries, including ones that are tiny in comparison (definitely not "top dog"), that enjoy comparable standards of living. The US could retain its high standards of living without being the "top dog".
>That metric probably doesn't factor in cost of living, cost of education, cost of healthcare, etc.
Ito does, it's PPP adjusted. Just look it up instead of projecting flaws to obtain a result you desire.
>My point was that there are many countries, including ones that are tiny in comparison (definitely not "top dog"), that enjoy a comparable standards of living.
I agree completely. All the top countries would be good places to live, with tradeoffs here and there.
But for most of the world, the US is a terrific alternative to where they are, at least if one wants to raise their standard of living.
The US does indeed do better than most of the world. I just don't think it's fair to credit its success to its status as a "top dog" or superpower. In my opinion, the vast majority of the credit goes elsewhere, e.g. its (largely) free enterprise system, capacity to attract foreign talent, top universities, culture, etc.
Because old people tend to have more wealth since they had a lifetime to accumulate. This places with older people tend to be richer, but that does not necessarily translate to what happens to an average person in a society.
For example, in the US the median network for an 69 year old (right around retirement) is
over 33 times as much as an 18 year old [1], with values in between spread as expected. So a society with significantly more old people (such as Japan) would have higher median wealth but not necessarily more income (for example, US pays more than Japan on average [2], but we're younger).
So, if you move to Japan from the US assuming you'll end up richer, you may be making a mistake because you made that choice based on comparing things incorrectly.
Because that wealth isn't useful to individuals who are far away from accessing it, and that access / wealth can still change as they approach the age of access. Additionally, the idea of "start low end high" is being questioned by many individuals who would rather have a more flat curve while starting higher initially.
Personally I think it's better to "do by example" with other open western democracies. And then when dealing with China etc rather than letting them roughshod over your financial and data economies because of principles or whatever, enforce the same rules upon them as they put upon you. Then there's an actual incentive and mechanism by which trade can open up in a fair manner. Our (speaking broadly about the west) current approach to China is madness.
Reciprocity is so fundamental to nature that people can’t stop doing it:
Most of the studies about “people are irrational” are times psychologists fail to realize that people are acting on an iterated (rather than single round) game — and enforcing reciprocity through their “irrational” acts.
We know at an instinctive level that reciprocity is necessary in game theory — eg, Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Reciprocity is necessary but one of the best strategies for iterated prisoner's dilemma is tit-for-tat or "equivalent retaliation". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
You always start out by cooperating but if someone defects on you, you defect on them.
It leads to escalation because people (or nations) disagree about when the balance is restored, due to loss aversion (subjectively feeling more intensity from a loss than from an objectively equivalent win), among other things. That leads to perpetual eye for an eye for an eye for an eye, and to a tendency to increase rather than decrease the reciprocity.
Maybe in some situations its better to risk escalation than be complacent and submissive? There are millions of examples in life where this is the case.
Your argument is so general as to be almost meaningless. It can be used to justify not responding to almost anything.
To understand how this situation has come about have a read of "Red-Handed" by Peter Schweizer.
The Chinese "elite capture" program is well-documented. They intentionally ensnare govt & business elites (and family members) in extremely lucrative deals with China to ensure they remain pro-China's interests. And there are some big names in there (Bidens, Pelosi, and McConnell etc).
The media doesnt talk about this corruption as they all have movie studios and want to sell their movies into China.
Its why there may be occasional discussion of the problem (like here) but for some inexplicable reason, simple and obvious steps are never taken.
The political will simply isn't there due to elite capture IMO.
> First, this ignores that the USA benefits tremendously from trading with other countries, most of all with China. If this mindset was applied universally, the USA (and the world) would be worse off.
This is true, but it only works if everyone does it. If one country is the main one that safeguards trade, releases costly scientific research (and open source codebases) for nothing and plays as well as it can, but others don't (and even look down on the safeguarding country for spending so much on defence instead of bread/circuses) then it takes a massive force of goodwill on the part of that one country to keep doing it.
(I am not a US citizen/resident, to pre-empt the standard ad hominem :)
> the average US citizen would still be better off than the average Chinese citizen
By what metrics? As an example, longevity is slightly higher in China than in US (77.30 years vs 77), it is GROWING in China while decreasing in US, or china has a transportation system that is orders of magnitude better than the US one. Ever heard of the high speed train system and how quickly was it built?
Median income alone isn't enough to judge the quality of life of a country. I'd rather be poorer but live longer and in a country that works also for non-millionaires, but you can take more money with the lower longevity if you prefer.
The poverty rate in US is ~14%, that's tens of millions of Americans living in poverty. Comparing incomes directly doesn't help, how much can $5k buy you in China vs how much can the poverty level income buy you in US?
Except that in the US it just takes some health issue to put you in debt for years/life. Or that to exist in the US you are required to buy a car and so on, since it has a third world public transportation system.
The pont being that you can still have somewhat higher life standards with less purchasing power but a stronger social state.
Like not everyone lives in Los Angeles or Washington you know. There's cities like Detroit, there's cities without drinkable water, there's countless trailer parks.
Okay, let's assume there's total economic equality between Americans and Chinese.
In China if you're the wrong religion they put your men in prison camps and assign a rapist to sleep in bed with your women and indoctrinate them into the communist party.
If you are in prison, China will murder you and sell your organs.
In China the labor conditions are so bad they have to install "suicide nets" in factories because so many people try to jump out of windows or off roofs to kill themselves.
America has MANY warts, but there's really no comparison.
It's pointless to get into a competition for who's worst. I disagree at least partially on each one of your points and could reply with something equally bad or worse that's happening right now in the US, but I won't as we're talking about economics, not unsourced genocide claims.
Your first argument sounds like appeasement, didn't work so well in WW2. Sounds like burying your head in the sand hoping no one will do anything bad.
I think the parent post means top dog in military and power sense, not welfare of citizens which is all well and good until another nation is trying to undermine your core values.
> Your successor will be judged by the standard you set
What successor are we thinking of here? Is that China? India? Russia? These are all very scary regimes.
The story of appeasement was basically that the Nazis kept invading places, country after country, until they tried to take on the USSR and got transformed into paste (the US getting involved being a major factor). It was really quite breathtaking in hindsight because they wouldn't stop and obviously didn't intend to stop, ever.
That logic is nothing like appeasement. Or if it is then appeasement is a great strategy that we should all be using daily at all levels of societal organisation.
Making enemies of people who are not enemies is one of the stupidest moves imaginable. It is hard to overstate how mistaken that sort of mistake would be.
Yes indeed. Two out of those three countries have never invaded outside countries, whether for freedom, WMD or some other crap excuse. One of them is actually a functioning democracy. On the other hand a citizen of a country that has invaded almost a dozen sovereign nations, conducted almost an equal number of proxy wars and even used nuclear weapons twice, thinks we are scary. And lumps Russia, China and India all into one ill defined category of "scary regimes"...
All this ignoring for the moment the general Western enterprise of erstwhile colonialism and current economic neocolonialism that makes the destruction wrought upon developing nations by direct war/attacks pale in comparison.
> Two out of those three countries have never invaded outside countries
Limiting ourselves to the currently existing states, India has annexed Hyderabad, Junagardh, Dadra, and Nagar Haveli, while China has invaded India and Vietnam, and is presently annexing the South China Sea. This doesn't excuse the US actions in Iraq, but it does show that they are less unique than you claim.
Most of those were merged into India, not invaded. The ones that were invaded resulted in minimal losses, in the order of hundreds. It also happened 60 years ago.
> Two out of those three countries have never invaded outside countries
If you consider Taiwan a country, that's technically true but misleading. China would have invaded long ago if the US weren't capable or (claiming to be) willing to defend it.
[citation needed]. US claims that’s true, but everyone who remembers Iraq knows US loves a good lie. China, on the other hand, explicitly declares they won’t invade. China also doesn’t have much to gain by invading, and everything to lose.
Could you point us to China saying that? AFAIK China's policy is precisely the opposite: they've repeatedly made it very clear they will use military force if Taiwan ever proclaims independence.
No - they made it clear that they will use military force if US invades Taiwan. They also made it very clear that they want peaceful solution, because their economy doesn’t depend on waging wars.
Feel free to prove otherwise; note that Chinese statements are quite often misquoted.
“If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost,” Defence Minister Wei Fenghe said during a meeting with Lloyd Austin on Friday.
“The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] would have no choice but to fight … and crush any attempt of Taiwan independence, safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Perhaps not really fair to lump India in with China and Russia.
My biggest concern is domestic policy, given that being "top dog" would probably imply a general cultural and political movement towards whichever regime wins.
USA has done awful things, and nowadays seems to have a very uncertain future but values such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion are important to humanity and happiness imo and they still stand in the US despite all the craziness.
China and Russia shouldn't need any explanation in that respect, I can point to many sources. India's BJP is almost openly persecuting Muslims and doctoring history to be more Hindu.
"As for me, I'm an American and it is in my best interests that USA stays top dog. I didn't immigrate here to downgrade lol, so I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player."
The country or its people? This seems like a very selfish sentiment. Shouldn't we want everyone to prosper, no matter where they are from? There are countless who may not be able to afford to emigrate to the US
Wonder if GP would also support a repressive regime to remain 'among top dogs' in case democracy were toppled in own country (which is not unthinkable).
Zero sum doesn’t mean there is a loser to every transaction. It just means that the net total change is zero. You buy a friend a beer, and you get a beers worth of camaraderie.
When you eat food, something had to die for that. It was a transfer of biochemical energy from that creature to you.
Even if it was a vegetarian meal, it got transported to you and dumped CO2 into the atmosphere. The truck probably hit bugs and maybe ran over some small wildlife.
If you didn't exist, there would be slightly less demand. If 300 million of you didn't exist, there would be a whole lot less demand. The world would be noticeably different.
Everything is energy expenditure and reallocation. Even hugging your son expends ATP that could have been used elsewhere. Hug him a million times and you will be very tired.
I'm not arguing that you shouldn't love your son. I'm saying that the world, at the most fundamental level, revolves around the availability of energy and resources. All of these things in the micro add up in the macro. And even if you aren't concerned about it, your government likely is.
Every single choice has some quantum of opportunity cost and will play out in butterfly effect fashion.
In terms of the energy you want to consume in a form factor you can utilize - food, coal if you want electricity today, plastics in tour phone, Amazon shipping, etc. - it's very much not constant.
It is not. When I go shopping I give them a bill and I get something to eat. Both parties are better off after that transaction.
Similarly, if I am good at making stuff but terrible at growing stuff, by being in a community I can survive despite an utter lack of agricultural abilities and produce stuff that the farmers would not know how to make. Again, not zero sum.
You could argue that this is civilisation and unnatural. But nature is full of symbionts, not only predator/prey dynamics. “Life is a zero-sum game” sounds like something a social Darwinist would say to justify their pre-existing beliefs. It is in some instances, but it also isn’t in quite a lot of cases. It comes from a very incomplete understanding of life and ecosystems in general.
> Both parties are better off after that transaction.
What about the externalities of that transaction?
* If meat, what was killed to produce it? If veg, what was removed from the ground (and how will it be replaced)?
* Who was exploited in the production?
* What damage did you cause while traveling to the store?
* What damage was done while getting the goods/supplies to the store?
* What infrastructure was required to facilitate the transaction? What damage and opportunity costs did that inflict?
The economist would hand-wave all that away as being priced in by the "efficient" economy. Yet even the tiniest inefficiency (say, un/under-accounted damage to the environment caused by burning petroleum to power the vehicles involved) compounds over billions of such transactions every day over decades into massive debts that humanity must ultimately account for.
> What about the externalities of that transaction?
You’re entirely right, though for now I am indeed going to wave my hands and argue that it was a first-order simplification, and that externalities do not turn it into a zero-sum game :)
In the grand scheme of things, yes, lack of foresight is going to bite us in the backside.
I’m not sure you know what 0 sum is. Zero sum doesn’t mean you can’t exchange money for goods and services.
> When I go shopping I give them a bill and I get something to eat. Both parties are better off after that transaction.
Yes, you go shopping and exchange N dollars for N dollars worth of goods. The net change is 0. That’s why it’s zero sum. Of course, life isn’t truly 0 sum. Otherwise we’d have no total economic growth, which is clearly false. However, how those economic gains are distributed probably is 0 sum.
“Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation which involves two sides, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other”
> Zero sum doesn’t mean you can’t exchange money for goods and services.
Zero-sum means that when I win, the other party loses. It means that there cannot be a voluntary exchange, because to agree about an exchange both parties need to see an upside.
> Yes, you go shopping and exchange N dollars for N dollars worth of goods. The net change is 0.
That is not what it means, though. In any case, I am better off after the exchange because now I have something to eat. The merchant is better off as well because now they can buy an iPhone or something. We are both better off at the end, and nobody has to lose. A zero-sum game in this instance might be the farmer who was pressured to sell €10 cheaper so that the merchant can take these €10 as margin. There was a net transfer from one party to the other with no other upside. But it is far from the only type of situation in life.
The initial assertion was “life is a zero-sum game”. Not by a long shot.
> However, how those economic gains are distributed probably is 0 sum.
Again, that is not what it means. Game theory does not need the concept of currency.
Besides, even assuming that it were the case, the fact that the amount of most currencies in existence just keeps increasing is a proof that it does not work like that. Someone, somewhere has to generate that money, therefore there are net emitters.
> Besides, even assuming that it were the case, the fact that the amount of most currencies in existence just keeps increasing is a proof that it does not work like that. Someone, somewhere has to generate that money, therefore there are net emitters.
Money gets created from banks lending money from their deposits. This makes sense even in a zero-sum world.
Yes, zero sum means a gain for one is a loss for another. But you’re not gaining or losing when you buy something. The seller isn’t gaining or losing either. You’re both trading like for like.
Again, zero sum does not imply like for like trades are impossible.
You are arguing purely on price but not considering other factors. To the person who bought the beer, the deemed value is probably more than they paid for it, and to the seller the beer was a liability due to having a limited shelf life and occupying shelf space. Thus there was a gain for both parties.
The basis of the capitalist system is that price is set based off of worth to the sellers and buyers. Yes, I am arguing purely on price, because the price takes into account many different factors like the liability of holding stock and the utility of drinking with friends.
>>> The basis of the capitalist system is that price is set based off of worth to the sellers and buyers. Yes, I am arguing purely on price, because the price takes into account many different factors like the liability of holding stock and the utility of drinking with friends.
Pricing isn’t perfect. It is typically the same for all. If I hadn’t been drinking water for a whole day, I would probably buy it anywhere I could and pay whatever the price. If I really need a medicine to live, I would probably pay whatever the price as long as I can afford it. And there are more examples of this
So, if something prices at 5 dollars, it can be worth more than 5 dollars to the seller and / or the buyer
Benefiting from cooperation doesn’t mean something is or is not zero sum. Take war for example. I can team up with others to form an army and conqueror distant lands. By cooperating, everyone in the army benefits more than they could individually, but the source of those benefits comes from the zero-sum expense of others.
The only source (I can think of) of positive sum benefits is innovation. I can, for example, take iron ore, learn how to smelt steel, and use steel to get more iron ore. Smelting iron is still zero-sum, but learning how to smelt iron is what increases the size of the pie.
Model war as hostility between nations or fractions. The fact that this fraction can be internally consistent does not mean that war represents cooperation.
Do you understand that your own government has even more power over you than a foreign one? It's in your best interest that no government collects this kind of data about you.
The country that you reside in has the most power over you simply by virtue of having an active police force and/or military. No need for any data collection whatsoever.
People had their life ruined for a tweet from a decade ago. Now imagine your whole life is tweeted minute by minute. Even if the current government won't hang you, it doesn't mean the next one won't do it for the things that are legal and completely normal today.
Its exactly in line with what I said. End of the day, we're all on teams whether or not you like it.
And every single country on this planet has baggage. I have people in my family who are living who remember what it feels like to be considered sub-human by British imperialists as they allowed famines. On the grand scheme of things, if we add up the sins and good deeds, the USA has done more to improve the lives of people who are here than other places. It is one of the major reasons my family and I immigrated here. Is it perfect? No. But it is a place where a bunch of different types of people attempt to build something together. Gridlock sucks, sometimes it feels pretty awful, but just speaking personally for myself there's nowhere else in the world where someone like me (with my skin color, religious preferences, etc.) would be able to go as far, or further.
For all its faults, the USA has
- elected an African American president twice
- fought itself and destroyed its own people and cities over slavery
- helped stop 2 world wars
- most of the top companies and talent
- created a sense of world stability where people for the most part chill the f out when they see and want $USD
And it has also caused some problems along the way, I'm sure you can name many of them. But again, in 2022, when I do a simple calculation of where I (with my own baggage and attributes) would most prosper, I can't think of another country. I have been to Japan, loved it there, but it isn't the melting pot that America is. Again these are just my opinions, as someone who immigrated to the USA and is proud to call themselves a US citizen.
This is a bit of a fallacy. The institutions/administration from top-to-bottom is important. For example, Scandinavia never had a black/brown head of state but still the police would not treat you badly like it happens in US. Yes, I have lived there.
Another example, India had head of state from all different religions but does not mean all is fine and clean.
The institutions are important - not the person.
PS: In principle, you as US citizen want your country to top dog. All fine. At the end if every country thinks they themselves want to unilaterally be top - conflicts happen.
At some point one needs to think universally - and establish a level.
That's not at all what I'm saying but ok. Don't worry, I vote for education reform/strength each time, its something I think is lacking here in some areas.
Lacking? That's putting it mildly. In a lot of poor areas - or areas that are populated mostly by minorities - education is just poor. As in, so poor that there are issues transferring college credits other places in the world.
Realistically, you have it backwards. In some areas, the education is fine. In many - probably the majority - it simply isn't and you'll be indebted for the rest of your life unless you are really lucky. We (Americans) pay teachers poorly and treat a number of students like criminals while punishing those same students in ways that they cannot get the same education as their peers. And this is after we've failed to make sure children have food and housing so that they can put effort towards learning.
"Lacking in some areas"... yeah. With a generous definition of some.
> On the grand scheme of things, if we add up the sins and good deeds, the USA has done more to improve the lives of people who are here than other places.
Interestingly enough, this is the same pro CCP argument but applied to the US.
I will say that the melting pot is true and that the US is one of the most immigration friendly places I've been to. (from a cultural side, not from a paperwork side). In other places you can be there for 20 years and never be considered a true citizen while in the US people would consider you a true American.
> Who cares? Is this an American thing to always brag something about race, or how much "non-racist we are"? Nobody gives a sh* here.
As another European who lives in Asia, I don't understand this European love of blanket ranting against Americans. Yes, the US still has a racism problem. In fact, every country in the world has racism problems.
That doesn't make the topic of who can get elected irrelevant. Can you imagine ANY kind of foreigner getting elected into government in China? Or even in, say, Germany? These are different degrees of cultural openness.
Sorry, foreigner was a clumsy choice here, and I chose it because in many Asian countries it's quasi synonymous. People of different origin are always foreigners to the local population, whether they're permanent residents or citizens or not. Maybe I should have said "someone who isn't part of the majority ethnically".
This is true, but the hatred Obama faced generally revolved around a belief that he was effectively foreign if a legal citizen and, moreover, a citizen by birth. He wasn't a "real American" -- these were the words used by Sarah Palin. And generally conservatives in the US regard non-conservatives as less American than themselves. The reverse is not the case. Bernie and AOC don't suggest Trump isn't American.
I'm curious how universal this is. The fascist regimes of the mid 20th century all demonized a large segment of their own population and put them outside the protection of the state, or rather, targeted them as enemies of the state and the "true" citizens. How does Marine Le Pen speak of the left-leaning French? Japan is a particularly ethnically uniform nation. Does the Right in Japan regard the Left as non-Japanese? If so, does the Left reciprocate, or does it regard the Right as Japanese but wrong?
> Who cares? Is this an American thing to always brag something about race, or how much "non-racist we are"?
It matters because it's unprecedented in the United States, which is far more diverse than any other country in the world by a long shot. Think about all the racial tension that exists in most European countries from some sizable "outsider" populations. Roma in most of Europe. Polish in England. Turks in Germany. The United States completely eclipses all of that because we have accept more refugees and immigration than any other country in the world and we have the largest immigrant population in the world.
> Nobody gives a sh* here.
Probably not if you are part of the roughly 90 percent of people in any given state in Europe that happen to be the right race.
> In my opinion, US is still racist AF.
Yes, which is why seeing a black president be elected is remarkable.
> And it can mean racist against all kinds of people, even against white people. But you don't want to hear that ;-P ;-P
Racism is a shared tradition amongst all people and ironically it does not discriminate.
The methodology used in this list is deeply flawed. It depends on US Census Bureau data which does not make distinctions between subgroups of ethnicities, despite them being culturally and racially distinct from each other. Indians (which could be broken down into further subgroups), Afghani (which could be further broken down into Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, etc.), Japanese and Laotians are not the same people but they'd all be classified as Asian. This does not paint an accurate picture of the incredible diversity that exists in the United States. In contrast, Uganda, which was ranked the highest on this list, has much more granular data available.
I'd urge you to pause your ignorant, inflammatory, and xenophobic takes for a moment to reflect on whether or not they're even true.
The United States Census Bureau's official population counts, as I've said, use very broad groups to categorize ethnicities which is not reflective of just how many groups of people live in the United States. Korea has an idea of how many Koreans are living in the United States currently [1] and you can probably type just about any sort of ethnicity, nationality, or race, and find some estimates or information about their presence in the United States. The Census Bureau does perform (unofficial) surveys that can give you a glimpse of the demographics in the US [2] [3] as well.
We have the largest population of immigrants in the world [4] and the nation is comprised almost entirely of non-indigenous people. The fact that the US is incredibly diverse is not controversial to anyone that is even modestly informed.
> Is this an American thing to always brag something about race, or how much "non-racist we are"? Nobody gives a sh* here.
Sure, you have no racial problems of your own to deal with... (http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/harvard-survey-over-15-yea...) There is an old saying about people in glass houses that you may want to consider. You may also wish to stop kidding yourself when raising the question of whether or not you are on your knees servicing American interests; if you did not see yourself in such a position then it would probably be unnecessary for you to act with such childish hostility.
> if you did not see yourself in such a position then it would probably be unnecessary for you to act with such childish hostility
I think OP is aware of this? The US is better to be beholden to than Russia or China, but ideally the EU would be the union it claims to be instead of a bunch of bickering city-states.
I resent that too. I think the US is objectively a worse country, but somehow, everything useful to the world happens there. I’m just sad that such an exploitative way of living is what apparently drives progress.
Historically speaking (for millenia), Europeans obliterated my people in the past, enslaved each other and most of the world, and stole so much to build your wealth.
Europe raped the rest of the world for nearly 500 years: the British Raj, the Belgian Congo, the Opium wars, the race for Africa, Apartheid are but a few examples.
Europe created modern chatel slavery.
Europe started the WWI and WWII.
Europe birthed Nazism and Communism.
Many of the problems we currently face are the result of European meddling: from the Sykes-Picot agreement, to Iran, to African civil wars.
The US has been a far more benign superpower than (collectively) Europe ever was.
UPDATE:
Even racism (scientific racism) is a European invention, mainly to justify why it was good for Europeans to subjugate the rest of the world.
If the US had been a super power in the 17th or 18th century you can be certain they would have colonized other countries as well.
Regarding WWI and WWII, Europe has never had the homogeneous culture of big states like the US. Again, wars have been the norm for most of humanity. The current peaceful era is really an anomaly.
Europe stopped doing most of this a century ago, mainly because they couldn’t anymore.
It is like the bully who broke both legs and then goes around on crutches and tells everyone how great he is in that he doesn’t beat people up anymore.
Do you think the UK would have given up India if it were not for the devastation of two world wars?
Look at how France fought to keep its colonies in Algeria and Vietnam?
Look at how Germany bullies countries like Greece and Italy and cozies (up until very recently) to Putin.
The British brought over, sold, and legalized slavery in the 13 colonies (and other North American locations), long before the USA was even a thing. The USA slave problem was started by Europeans.
- In 959, Doge Pietro Candiano IV emitted a decree stipulating that no Venetian citizen could lend money to a Greek slave trader, and no Venetian ship would be permitted to transport slaves in Greece. The ban on slave transport was later extended "Ultra Polam" or beyond the Venetian outpost of Pola
- In 1435 Pope Eugene IV condemned slavery, of other Christians, in Sicut Dudum; furthermore, he explicitly forbade the enslavement of the Guanches.
- On 22 December 1741, Pope Benedict XIV promulgated the papal bull "Immensa Pastorum Principis" against the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and other countries
Long before the USA was a thing (and Italy for that matter)
And also the Spanish and French. When discussing 16th-18th century North America, encompassing the slave trade as being started by Europeans is not inaccurate.
We can nitpick til the end of time, and I agree with you on those points. Like I said in my comment, nobody is perfect. Hell my own people were used as slaves for the longest times and called "sub humans".
We can do this for so many countries, I mean some of them literally murdered millions of people in camps (Germany, USSR, China), some of them were so corrupt their entire nations failed (Sri Lanka, African nations with people like Mugabe, etc.), while others were quiet and complacent in the conquest and rape of the world (most European countries) and now tell others from a high horse.
I love how USA isn’t on the list, despite the two millions of people imprisoned in US camps, which is some 25% of worlds total prison population. Not to mention ongoing prison slavery which is reportedly critical to economy in some states.
Considering how many shootings happen in the US and so many victims being little children in schools, I find it odd that you think it's a great place to prosper when being shot at is a real life threat esp. for those who can't even protect themselves.
As an outsider, to me the American society doesn't seem like a sustainable one. And it corroborates the fact that so many Americans are emigrating out of America.
“the annual odds that an American child will die in a mass shooting at school are nearly 10 million to 1, about the odds of being killed by lightning or of dying in an earthquake”
There's clearly a strong opposition against gun control in US, so the fact that the media is downplaying the shootouts by comparing it to natural disasters is not surprising.
But keep in mind, while Americans find it to be a commonality, it's rare to see news like this in other parts of the world:
"...but students don’t need the active-shooter drills now conducted in over 95 percent of the nation’s schools..."
Active shooter drills? In schools? You folk live in a first world country but act like you are living in an active warzone
Reporting the actual data is not "downplaying". And the notion that the US media downplays school shootings is about as wrong as you could possibly be. Have you ever watched US news? School shootings get 24/7 coverage for weeks.
"Active shooter drills? In schools? You folk live in a first world country but act like you are living in an active warzone"
These things happen due to the same kind of fear mongering and statistical illiteracy you demonstrate in your comments. School shootings are horrible, but extremely rare. It would, of course, be better if we didn't have them, just like it would be better if we didn't have earthquakes, electrical storms, plane crashes, etc. but it's not rational to make life choices based on 1 in 10 million events.
You're also wrong about support for gun control. A majority of the US population supports stronger gun control. Unfortunately, in our political system, that's not sufficient to make it happen.
Well, idk about you, but I hear of at least one school shooting in the US every week. Statistically, the numbers might not be much, but it sure caused 95% of schools to enforce active shooter drills, no?
> A majority of the US population supports stronger gun control. Unfortunately, in our political system, that's not sufficient to make it happen.
Isn't US a democracy? If majority of the population supports stronger gun control, it should be easy to pass.
Anyway, I don't mean to put you on the defensive. I understand that you love your country.
That's because the media is sensationalist and uses fear mongering to drive up engagement and revenue.
Also, it's a big country. When you have a population of hundreds of millions, a lot of things that are extremely unlikely to ever impact an individual citizen will nonetheless happen on a regular basis somewhere in the country.
"Isn't US a democracy? If majority of the population supports stronger gun control, it should be easy to pass."
If only it were that simple.
"Anyway, I don't mean to put you on the defensive. I understand that you love your country."
I love some things and hate other things. I just think the discussion should be based on facts rather than emotion and hyperbole.
I agree that school shootings are a problem here and would like to see stronger gun control as much as anyone, but it isn't helpful to exaggerate the (very low) level of danger kids face in school.
Whatever it needs to do becomes different based on how your country is governed.
China has unelected* leaders that at least in theory holds only Communist ideals.
While flawed, in a republic at least you get to vote for your leaders, and thus choose what ideals you like the best.
Of course republicanism or democracy does not preclude a country from committing horrible acts, but they are cleaned up much sooner, and those who are responsible for it are thrown out of office (and sometimes even into jail). Not so in authoritarian countries like China.
* You can technically vote in China, but due to its authoritarian nature only one party is allowed and you're expected to uphold the party line.
No it doesn't. Except for cancel culture (which isn't state run btw), you can say and think almost whatever you like in the USA so long as it isn't prejudiced or harassing. You are also not punished for starting other parties in the USA, since it's completely legal. Thus there are alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans. The First Past the Post system just means that that it's extremely unlikely that alternatives will ever challenge the biggest two. Other than that the American system is decidedly liberal and free.
What has that got to do with the political system in the USA? You have every opportunity of changing how American prisons are organized by participating in the political system. Nobody will jail you for having an opinion about it, or campaigning for prison reform, or hell, even legal reforms in general. Not so in China. If you criticize the state there, you do indeed risk jail, if you don't just suddenly vanish. The main difference here is that the USA has a largely liberal system, while China has an authoritarian one. Good luck surviving (!) in China if you have a strong political opinion about any issue pertaining to their state or their leadership. One of the main differences between the American and the Chinese system is that scrutiny and criticism is welcomed as a means of making things better in the USA, while it is punished in the People's Republic.
> You have every opportunity of changing how American prisons are organized by participating in the political system.
How so? Both parties are all in on the prison-industrial scam. Likewise for healthcare, etc. I agree that the US has a largely 'liberal' system, in the classical sense of 'liberal'. I.e. capital trumps human beings.
And you ignore the fact that the US imprisons a much higher percentage of its population than other countries. Part and parcel of the authoritarianism (which is only increasing).
Welcome to democracy! As a minority opinion you will naturally not be able to force the majority to accept yours. If you did, that would be authoritarian and evil... You're still allowed to voice that opinion, however (within very liberal limits). For instance you can involve yourself more directly within the parties and run for various political positions, write petitions, become a member of pressure or lobby groups, arrange demonstrations, and many other things. Hell, you can even pointlessly troll discussions here on YT with political straw man arguments! And because you live in The Land of the Free nobody will jail you for it! This is why the American system is liberal and the Chinese system is not. But good luck on making prison reform in the USA. God knows they need it!
Edit: To answer your claim that:
> “(...) the US imprisons a much higher percentage of its population than other countries. Part and parcel of the authoritarianism.”
No, it's not. Every guilty prisoner in the USA had a public trial with a lawyer before they were sent to jail. In other words they had due process which is the mark of a liberal democracy. On the other hand due process is constantly broken in authoritarian regimes. A great example is, again, China, where you can be "vanished" just for having the wrong opinion, if you're not simply sent to a re-education camp that is for all intents and purposes a modern style of concentration camp.
Before you even try, can the USA be accused of the same thing? Why yes, because it imprisons enemy combatants which are then subjected to cruel an unusual treatment, for instance at Guantanamo Bay (which is amazingly still open for business). But crucially the USA does not do this to American citizens, so while they act horribly authoritarian towards external enemies, they do not act authoritarian against their own citizens, not even towards domestic political opponents.
In the US, you are expected to uphold the line that brings you donors. That makes leftist parties non-viable. That’s not such a big difference from the Chinese situation as you’d think, except in direction.
What makes leftist parties unviable is the majority of the population disapproving of socialism.
People online vastly overestimate the actual effect of money on political results, naturally disregarding all the donations made to candidates that lose and ignoring races where the lesser funded candidates win.
If Americans wanted a leftist government, they’d vote for it, simple as that. And yet even in the most left leaning states and cities in the nation , leftist principles have failed to gain much electoral ground.
-- Persecutes followers of pretty much all religions --- Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Falun Gong, etc
-- Flat-out censors anything that offends them in the slightest
-- Puts whoever they want into detention with no kind of due process, from
small-time activists to billionaires
-- Harvests the organs of (not previously dead) prisoners
-- Had drones peering into apartment windows during the latest COVID lockdown, broadcasting the literal message "control your soul's desire for freedom"
-- and of course is an autocracy in which Xi Jinping has absolute power
The USA is far from perfect but one thing we learned from Trump in 2016 and Bloomberg in 2020 is that money isn't everything in American politics. The parties do have major differences and bad actors can be held accountable.
I'm not American, but this equivalence that some people like to draw between the governments of China and the USA drives me crazy.
Well in that case I hope you don't moan when the EU places heavy restrictions on the data harvesting that American companies do.
I get the paranoia around China, I honestly do. I'm not at all unsupportive of the Chinese regime either. But this "one rule for us another for them" principle really needs to stop.
Why should it stop, as long as nations continue to pose threats to each other and their populations? I support both the US and the EU putting these restrictions in place (until such a time when everyone can be trusted, if ever).
Because it's a cyclic argument that only leads to hostilities. Of course I'm not advocating that if we stop collecting data everyone will suddenly play nice. But that doesn't mean it isn't extraordinarily hypocritical to moan about China and the EU placing restrictions on US companies (as is a frequent gripe on HN) while simultaneously placing restrictions on China and EU firms too.
We need to learn to find a saner middle ground if we're ever to advance as a species.
That doesn't mean it hasn't happened on threads you haven't seen. Anecdotally I've seen it happen a lot. Which, uncoincidentally, is also the reason why I mentioned it.
I thought you were saying it's a popular or majority opinion, which I don't believe to be the case. Otherwise, why would it be relevant?
Edit: I guess we can just see if any research has been done. If you trust this source, Americans seem to support (60% supporting versus 10% against) GDPR style data regulations [1].
That's not the same as saying they support the EU's regulations. Just that they'd support America imposing regulations. The issue being discussed here isn't whether people are in favour of privacy but whether they're in favour of international governments imposing restrictions on the way their home-grown corporations operate.
I appreciate from a high level the two questions overlap in this specific case study. However it's the framing of the question which really matters here, not the practical overlap.
Well first of all with this approach you will lose a lot of friends like EU (and australia, new zealand, south africa and gazillion more allies). US is not such trusty ally as it thinks it is already (ie all the spying on top european leaders, and thats just tip of iceberg).
US needs friends just like everybody else, alone it can project only so much influence. You don't keep friends by screwing them over continuously and having an untrustworthy upper hand over you all the time. And once we're not friends anymore, china may be an attractive alternative, whether you like it or not.
I'm in Europe, so I'm writing this as someone who likes our governments protecting people from American (and Chinese) companies. Very happy to be a big happy family again if things improve.
The companies themselves may moan but I don't think everyday Americans really care what the EU does.
> But this "one rule for us another for them" principle really needs to stop.
Why would any nation treat foreign companies equal to their own? I don't see the problem especially when its from an adversary or a nation who's companies are an extension of their government.
>I get the paranoia around China, I honestly do. I'm not at all unsupportive of the Chinese regime either. But this "one rule for us another for them" principle really needs to stop.
Because they don't operate under the same rules. Tiktok isn't some free market startup at this point. Their CEO is ex Xiami and clearly a party member.
I would bet a lot of money the CCP is putting unlimited resources into spreading Tiktok and harvesting data, plus manipulating sentiment of tiktok users.
This is NOT what US based companies do. They don't have government resources, and they sell ads. And the US government doesn't give a shit if snapchat or whoever else destroys facebook. They are not going to bail them out, or help them.
So it's not the same, it's not a fair fight, and in the background what the data is used for is probably completely different.
> As for me, I'm an American and it is in my best interests that USA stays top dog. I didn't immigrate here to downgrade lol, so I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player.
The interests of your government might not necessarily be aligned with yours.
Likely, their personal gains or the interests of lobbyists would come first and not necessarily align with borders/the colour of your passport cover. If you wanna stay "top dog", perhaps think it through a bit more and think a bit broader.
> so I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player
I would argue that admitting that the only way to convince Chinese apps to not track American users is to ban them (mostly because it's eating their own dog food with TikTok that's nowadays much more popular than America's own spying apps) doesn't sound much top dog, more like small dog barking at the big one.
It seems to be your idea, that America is prosperous despite freedom, and that we must carefully dole out the freedom lest we lose our edge.
I believe that America was founded on the idea that we could be great because we are free, and that giving our people the opportunity to thrive and be productive will only, in the long run, make our prosperity that much greater.
It's been said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. You would interpret this, I think, to mean that we should toss out the Bill of Rights anytime it seems inconvenient to our short-term ends. But I see it as a statement that, even when it seems contradictory, investing in the people rather than the power over them will lead to a greater nation even when that seems counterintuitive.
> so I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player.
Speaking as a friend - this attitude is becoming an existential problem for the US abroad. More and more countries are wondering if it's the US that's the problem.
Only if the top-dog analogy would have worked in long term. More than often, citizens of wanna-be/wanna-remain top-dog countries find themselves in terrible position as soon as their interests mildly conflicts with those of their nation states and they suddenly become pray to the top-dog itself. One area where you can see this in action is secure communication. When it comes to secure private communications for citizens, suddenly all nation-states, left and right want to excert unlimited control over it and they are united in fight against encryption.
Haha, true, I didn't immigrate here to end up in 3rd world country as well, but the Internet is very important and for it to work, it has to apply the same rules for everyone.
Facebook and Google have a NSA servers that get all the traffic even before they reach them and have complete access into their info, then you can't complain when Chinese do the same, after all, they are admiring USA and copying what we are doing.
If we want Chinese to do better, we need to do better, they will follow.
>As for me, I'm an American and it is in my best interests that USA stays top dog.
What do you mean by USA though? It's not a monolithic object and has plenty of rivals too. Also if USA is top dog, it may get freedom to do whatever it wants to you, be careful about what you want. When was the last time absolute power produced good results?
Also, power changes hands over time. As we've seen recently, where suddenly period trackers with any server side storage are an actual liability and an extremely dangerous idea.
I think they’re equating the mindset of “my group of people who happens to have this nationality has to be top dog” with “my group of people who happens to have this skin color has to be top dog”
This is not really about tik tok but more about the broader stance expressed by the comment they’re replying to.
Which takes me at why we have to be rivals (we people in countries), because government are rivals and monopolize trading and resources for themselves? It is very stupid that we passively accept those rules and let them drag us like that into things of this nature.
I am really (I am european) pissed off by the fact that someone decided we needed a war with Ukraine when we do not have anything for/against Russia or Ukraine in principle and they start to make pressure to all private business, etc. to make them do what these people want us to do. Literally in Spain I saw even bad press for people selling clothes (Mango) or yoghurts (Danone) just because they kept selling those products to normal Russian people. So govts can sell/send weapons to Ukraine with our taxes and without our permission at the same time they encourage and point to private company doing regular business so that they stop selling there? Seriously?
I really do not accept that, I want to have friends from wherever, go with whoever and do business with whom I deem appropriate without asking permission to anyone. If I am not selling intelligence for spying or weapons, what is wrong? I really do not get it.
> I really do not accept that, I want to have friends from wherever, go with whoever and do business with whom I deem appropriate without asking permission to anyone.
The reason that systems of economic sanctions exist is to provide alternatives to war. Europe learned some very rough lessons in the 20th century and earlier, leading up to the formation of the EU and before that the formation of the UN. These institutions and other institutions were created by people with memories of large-scale war fresh in their minds.
> The reason that systems of economic sanctions exist is to provide alternatives to war
I am not talking about this. I am talking about the fact that it is an oligarchy who chooses whether we go to war or not. I do not think most spanish think that Spain should be involved in a war that is at the other side of Europe where either of those country did anything to us. This is what I mean.
These wars respond to oligarchies interests, not to normal citizens interests.
I do not know if you get my point. Maybe there are real problems in Ukraine, well there are. But how is that really a reason to involve Spain? Why? Diplomacy, yes, sending weapons no. What if Russia decides we are in a black list later? Were we able to make a choice? Bc this involves our security and our economy and affects normal citizens.
So there is necessarily someone interested in this that is not normal, average people like me.
Your beef is with Vladimir Putin, not some nameless "oligarchy." As was pointed out to you, Europe has learned some hard lessons about the consequences of appeasement. The mistakes made in the 1930s must not be repeated with Russia today.
If you find this truth to be offensive, tragic, or overly inconvenient, well... so do all who live to see such times, as the guy with the long gray beard said.
I mean I get your sentiment on one hand. On the other hand, I have people in my family who knew what life is like under European (British) imperialism and being considered sub-human.
> I really do not accept that, I want to have friends from wherever, go with whoever and do business with whom I deem appropriate without asking permission to anyone.
Ask yourself what Ukranian citizens would answer to that question.
I am not talking about that. I agree with you about that. I have a good Ukranian friend also, even I visited his home some months back (in Spain). The topic is why everyone gets involved in things that are far and foreign to them.
I mean there are people who know totally normal russian and ukranian citizens like you and I and no government is entitled to put is in a war and after that choose who we can do business with. Russia, Ukraine or whatever country is not a block of people you must be against. It is formed by each of its individuals. If you do not want to do business with them bc you consider it harmful, that is ok. But you cannot force everyone else under your vision. Why should you? With which right you go to make pressure to private business that are just selling clothes or milk-derived products?
I am not for or against russians or ukranians. Think whatever but in a war you are going to see many disgusting things from both sides. It is like that.
I declare myself neutral and the last thing I wanted is my country to be involved in this stuff (and others).
Of course, at the same time I think that Russian invasion was stupid and a mistake. This is a power game and nothing else. I just want to live normal, not to get into unnecessary trouble. Diplomacy would have been better. And if diplomacy does not work, I do not know why Spain should be further involved. I can understand that countries close such as Latvia, Finland, Poland, etc. take a non-neutral position on this. But Spain? Seriously...
Assuming you are actually German (based on your username), you really shouldn’t require a particularly deep history lesson to understand why Russia is a problem. Jesus fuck man, the brick line runs through the center of your own capital city.
Actually I know what you mean, but on the other side of things, thinking that getting involved in absolutely every conflict is a good idea... I do not know, I do not see it as a good solution honestly.
So it is no different or in fact even worse than Facebook, as expected and as found in this security analysis. [0]
From [0]:
> The above code taken from the TikTok APK, shows the collection of cellphone data, specifically the IMEI of the cell phone. The IMEI number of a phone is literally created to identify the phone.
> We at Penetrum believe that everyone should have the right to know what data is being harvested by companies and would like to give our readers a clearer understanding of what happens when you download the mobile application TikTok. From our understanding and our analysis it seems that TikTok does an excessive amount of tracking on it’s users, and that the data collected is partially if not fully stored on Chinese servers with the ISP Alibaba.
So essentially, a 900GB data breach at Alibaba suggests that TikTok user tracking data which ties hundreds of millions of users has been exposed out in the open to be used by criminals, and scammers. This is nothing new or surprising as I have already questioned a TikTok fanatic about the excessive tracking in this app but decided to deflect with more whataboutsims. [1]
On top of that denial from their own users, all this tracking was made possible due to TikTok's spyware and their mass collection programme, with the additional fact that TikTok staff in China DID have access to US data after lying and denying it. [2]
So something that is even worse than Facebook is hardly 'The best thing to have happened to the Internet.' [3] Especially when TikTok was found to do even more invasive tracking than Facebook with sending biometrics, IMEI numbers and voice prints, and is required to give up and funnel all this data and traffic to the China and the CCP meaning it is another honeypot surveillance tool luring in the sheep to willingly give up all their data and they cannot be trusted.
TikTok should get either a massive fine in the billions just like Facebook did or it should be totally banned until it is verified to rid of its invasive data collection just like what India did recently. Failing to comply, it should get both.
I don't have a horse in this race at all, but the annoying part is that the same rules don't get applied across the board. Everything they're accusing TikTok of - from data harvesting to the government having access to said data - is true for western companies as well and that should be the problem. Not the fact that the data is now in the hands of the Chinese but that the data is being collected at all provided to the government.
The problem should be that the data is collected and provided to the government whenever they want - not that it's not the Chinese government. We had this discussion after the Snowden leaks and nothing changed whatsoever. Back then it was the US government and the US gov had the chance to change the rules so this could not happen. Now they're up in arms because other governments do the exact same thing. It's really annoying.
Ban every app that collects "problematic" user info. Make the collection itself illegal, give users control about their data but don't argue that the practice suddenly becomes problematic when others do it.
> The problem should be that the data is collected and provided to the government whenever they want - not that it's not the Chinese government. We had this discussion after the Snowden leaks and nothing changed whatsoever. Back then it was the US government and the US gov had the chance to change the rules so this could not happen. Now they're up in arms because other governments do the exact same thing. It's really annoying.
The differentiator here is national security, which raises an entirely different set of issues than the typical data collection and user privacy ones.
It's like the difference between sharing your bank password with your wife vs. some dude you aren't very friendly with who has a history of wire fraud. "Treat everyone the same" is not a workable policy.
Which means that all countries other than the US also should be banning Facebook, and most US companies. As Snowden showed, most of them have a history of wire fraud.
The EU authorities themselves are not banning Facebook, per se, despite the headlines - the threat to remove Facebook from the European market comes from Facebook/Meta, because they don't want to comply with the expected upcoming order preventing them from transferring EU data subject data to the US. The thing that the EU officials are preparing could be described as a ban on data transfer, although it's really an order to comply more correctly with an existing law (the GDPR) rather than a new obligation. But it's not a ban on operating in the EU.
If Facebook kept EU data subject data in the EU, or even if they use Standard Contractual Clauses to transfer it to different third countries without the same kind of problematic surveillance laws that the US has, there would be no issue.
What does the fact that we are allies change? This is espionnage in any case and the US has shown that they do not miss a beat when it comes to stealing information from us.
We would be doing the same of course if we were not much weaker and if our products were actually used over there.
> If a major war occurs in the near future it won't be between the EU and the US. This lowers the risk of US companies hold EU data.
I do not understand. What does a war has to do with the fact that countries spy on each other without rest? Merkel's phone was bugged by the US - not something nice you do to an ally, right? (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24690055)
> Also, don't be one sided on this. The EU countries also spy on the US.
I am not and this is exactly why I wrote the second sentence. Our capacities, unfortunately, are way lower.
Well, allies can ask friendly governments for information on their own citizens without violating and of their own privacy laws. So it can be useful as a circumvention tool for them.
> Which means that all countries other than the US also should be banning Facebook, and most US companies.
Like many sibling comments have already pointed out, many do.
But the answer to your statement is "no." You're trying to pull an oversimple rule out of a pithy comment and neglecting other important distinctions. It's not just a black/white distinction like foreign country vs. domestic, but more more nuanced one like enemy country vs adversary country vs neutral country vs allied country vs domestic. The answer to the question "should country X ban Facebook for national security reasons" will be different for different countries based on their context.
Blatantly false. Completely unrealistic. Additional regulation towards privacy perhaps - affecting all similar (American, Chinese, European etc.) platforms. But not an outright ban.
Facebook threatening to close their site in Europe because of regulations is not the same as EU banning them.
> There is a risk Europeans won’t be able to use Facebook after the Irish data protection agency (DPC) doubles down on stopping data transfer between the US and the E.U.
Judiciaries in multiple EU member states have judged Google to be breaching EU regulations (in regards to Google Analytics). That is not a ban; Google is welcome to do business in the EU if they observe EU laws and regulations.
>Which means that all countries other than the US also should be banning Facebook, and most US companies. As Snowden showed, most of them have a history of wire fraud.
If you assume equivalence between (1) Facebook and Tiktok and (2) the U.S. and China's data collection practices.
And I don't think those are equivalent, and therefore it's not necessary to treat the dissimilar cases the same.
It's much more valuable to them as a data source on others. So they try to rely on training and forbidding their own personnel from using such things. I assume the tik tok app has more security concerns than the platform itself.
Rubbish. China is less of a threat to anyone outside the US than the government inside the US.
If the FCC clarified their stance and highlighted very specific threats, I might be swayed but only if it was demonstrated that the US government isn't doing exactly the same thing.
All opaque data harvesting of public platforms, no matter who collects it, is bad.
Your example is garbage as well. In both situations you highlighted you have something that you don't have in face of data harvesting...choice. You can decide whether or not to give your banking password to a stranger or your wife. You usually have no choice when it comes to data harvesting...because usually the data is harvested out of the backdoor of a platform by selling it on.
> China is less of a threat to anyone outside the US than the government inside the US.
Why do you believe this, and based on what evidence? By “anyone outside the US”, are you referring to the population of China? What US threats are you referring to, and why do you believe they’re worse in the US? While the US has ample room for improvement, as do all countries, there’s a fairly wide range of serious humanitarian issues that are documented and indexed by a large number of people globally, and there seems to be very little disagreement about how China compares to the US on various censorship and freedom rankings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
Because it's US vs China and companies like Meta/Google/Twitter are already treated poorly in China? Ppl are already asking these kind of questions even long before this, why should we allow companies such as Tiktok while so many 'Western' tech companies are banned in China?
Apple's data in China is handled by China government affiliated entity https://technode.com/2018/01/10/apple-icloud-guizhou/ . China's typical play book in tech field is to have the original products banned and have their own copycat flourish.
>> It's like the difference between sharing your bank password with your wife vs. some dude you aren't very friendly with who has a history of wire fraud. "Treat everyone the same" is not a workable policy.
> The US government is not your wife no matter where you live
You're missing the point by taking the analogy too literally.
The issue is the data practices and propaganda capability. TikTok is supposedly a threat because Chicoms, but Facebook has no problem selling access to Russian influence operations.
Maybe the issue is abusive social networks hoovering up data with no controls and no regulation.
More like a progression from monetizing attention (questionable), to political manipulation (already awful), to domestic government overreach (Texas), to hostile nation targeting specific people for coercion/malware (national security).
> It's like the difference between sharing your bank password with your wife vs. some dude you aren't very friendly with who has a history of wire fraud. "Treat everyone the same" is not a workable policy.
Cambridge Analytica showed you don't need to hack. You just need to be a developer and have keys to the kingdom with a "gentleman's agreement" that you won't do anything hinky with the access you've been granted.
No need to hack, if you have the right connections and enough money you can buy anything from the US gov, the US gov has access to all data and non US citizens have no rights.
Not a good analogy. As a private citizen, my own national government having my private data is far more of a threat to me than Daddy Xi or Mr. Putin. Those two and their spooks are an ocean away. The local government is the one I need to live under.
Perhaps there is a reason why China’s government bans all the American Social Media companies. If they could undermine the country’s sovereignty then it would be a significant difference.
They ban them because the companies don't want to follow the same rules Chinese companies have to follow. It's exactly what I'm asking for. Have one set of rules and apply them to everyone. Ban data harvesting completely. Ban it for Facebook, Google and everyone else and then kick out TikTok because they don't follow the rules.
One of the first, most important rules Chinese companies have to follow in order to access this Chinese market is "be a Chinese company". I'm not exaggerating here, and if I remember rightly this is even an actual official, stated rule controlling who can offer information services like TikTok in China (rather then one of the many unstated rules their government also uses to screw with Western companies) and includes restrictions on non-Chinese even buying shares in those companies.
There was a rule when foreign companies have to partner with a local one. This rule was recently relaxed; for example there was some Tesla factory a while ago that had 100% foreign ownership.
In the Tesla case the Chinese government astroturfed a scandal as soon as the cars were available for sale, and people who had bought Teslas were being singled out for harrassment by police. So it's a very interesting case of rules being relaxed...
Are you talking about banning Teslas for government use or on government ground? That's not a scandal at all, that's just taking security precautions. These precautions may or may not be right, but nothing about these precautions were about kicking Tesla out of the country, nor banning Tesla use under the general public. In complete contrast to how Huawei was handled in the west.
First the PRC government made an exception for Tesla:
> To entice Tesla to China, the Chinese government agreed to let Tesla become the first non-Chinese auto company with a solely owned subsidiary in China.
Once Tesla was established in China, there was a faked scandal to discredit the company, supported by state media:
> In April, a Chinese Tesla owner’s video claiming “Tesla brakes fail” went viral in China and was viewed more than 200 million times. It is essential to know that sometimes the Chinese government pushes for or encourages such online outcries to achieve its political goals.
While the story was pushed by Xinhua, it turned out the actual brake failure was faked:
I probably ought to have mentioned this in my original comment - China allowed companies to set up certain kinds of Chinese operations, such as manufacturing, by partnering with a local company and setting up a joint operation but they're a lot more restrictive about online information services. Operating those really is limited to wholely Chinese-owned and Chinese-operated companies as I understand it, joint partnerships with foreign companies are not permitted to run them. This includes things like the Chinese versions of AWS and iCloud, which are entirely operated by existing Chinese companies.
This isn't true. Foreign websites get arbitrary banned in China despite following all their local rules. Even if they aren't banned, a lot of times they're artificially throttled. My best guess is that they'd rather keep the money circulated in China.
I'm really sick of this argument "companies don't want to follow the same rule in China". No they are not the same rules and it's not "don't want" but "can't". Take Yahoo for example, the formal CEO Jerry Yang lost his job as Yahoo China followed these "rules" back then to give email information of some dissent to Chinese government.
In China, when the government asks a company to do something, the company has no choice. When was the last time you heard US companies follow arbitrary ask of US government?
Again, they don't ban them. You're talking about a completely different thing. The Chinese rules (whatever they may be) apply to all companies. Your example even mentioned WeChat, a Chinese company. You would need to find an example where a US company is forced to do things that a company from China doesn't have to.
My argument is about having the same rules for everyone. The argument about data collection and privacy is a good one. It's just completely dishonest and hypocritical and doesn't serve the end user any purpose if it doesn't apply to everyone and it just clearly doesn't.
What social media company in the US bans positive coverage of mRNA vaccines?
In the US algorithms ban content, often by mistake. In China a political official or someone working for the government reviews the content personally. Big difference.
Algorithms are designed and tweaked by people who have biases and can be threatened by government officials or influenced by the media they consume which itself is majorly influenced by government organizations, lobbyist organizations, and corporate sponsors.
Also, who’s to judge that these poor algorithmic decisions are “mistakes” when only the companies are privy to the mechanics of the algorithm?
> They ban them because they won’t censor factual information and won’t promote disinformation.
Different censorship, different disinformation - but we have that in the west as well. The EU is several steps ahead in this race thanks to their Digital Services Act (making it criminal to spread some information, and threatening service providers with million-Euro-fines if they don't delete quickly enough [as in: within hours]), but the US has its very own 'Disinformation Governance Board' located with DHS, which is in all but name a Ministry of Truth. You are supposed to use the Internet to earn money and consume and spend, not to question the narrative.
There are no good countries. All nation-states suck. Some are better at marketing their alleged superiority to their less-intelligent (and thanks to controlling the education system: kept less-intelligent) population through "patriotism", though.
I haven't seen that happen in China either. How do you know it actually happened and wasn't some other rumour spread (since there's a plethora of disinformation both for and against the Chinese government)?
To be clear, I'm not in favour of the Chinese regime but your particular point does still require a citation.
>>Everything they're accusing TikTok of - from data harvesting to the government having access to said data - is true for western companies as well and that should be the problem
The thing is, yes Facebook and Google's data collection is horrendous, but TikTok it literally on another level.
Seems not true. I worked in mobile security. We had massive amounts of data about mobile apps and the suspected behaviour they show (via dynamic analysis, static analysis, code signatures, etc)
We saw a huge amount of Ad SDKs showing all kinds of malicious behaviour. Facebook etc were the worse, TikTok was not particularly exceptional.
One of the biggest problem for an anti malware product in that space is that most "legitimate" software looked indistinguishable from spywares. And if we were to mark these as malware then our product won't be usable.
These apps are hoovering crazy amount of information. They should be banned, universally. No matter which country they originate at. Giving politicians this kind of power over the population in a democratic society is a huge national security risk. No less than a foreign power having these capabilities.
We have newer leaks about data collections that seem genuine but that particular post you've linked to has been debunked. He even promoted a subreddit where he was unable to provide proof for _any_ of his claims. Nothing ever happened. Some things just didn't make any sense like the app making regular http requests. Google doesn't allow that and they haven't allowed it for years. It's literally impossible for that to be the case, for example.
Personally I feel this is as much a failing of of mobile OSs as anything else. As long as we have an environment where ad networks think it's desirable to collect this kind of information it's going to get collected, whether by TikTok or ad networks. Apple at least attempt to limit what data is accessible by apps, Google is less incentivized to do so.
It's not much help to "ban TikTok" while the ad networks run wild. If we're going to be worried about China I doubt it'd be too much trouble for them to place a few engineers into ad networks and exfiltrate the data from there.
Maybe the governments should force mobile OS to provide absolute zero information about anything to apps. If the apps can't get anything they can't leak anything.
As a user I want to have the app as isolated as possible and have the ability to grant it any system permissions I want. Perhaps combined with a store rule that an app isn't allowed to block unrelated functionality when it doesn't get the permissions it wants.
iOS has been quite good to me in this regard, although it still needs improvements (e.g. add a permission for accessing internet).
Unfortunately that approach pretty easily ends up in a territory where you can't do anything interesting with your phone, either, because it's all too dangerous.
Exactly right. As can be seen via the purchases of large swaths of private location data by the Department of Homeland Security and other government entities, essentially side stepping US citizens’ 4th amendment rights [1].
- Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
- Other apps you have installed (I've even seen some I've deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)
- Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)
- Whether or not you're rooted/jailbroken
- Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC
- They set up a local proxy server on your device for "transcoding media", but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication
The scariest part of all of this is that much of the logging they're doing is remotely configurable, and unless you reverse every single one of their...
*
Not trying to be flippant, but that list just sounds like google play services to me. In fact, I assumed play services collects way more data.
Also, tiktok surely must be collecting some engagement / interaction analytics... That list doesn't seem complete or legitimate.
I would not think any of these points would be ok. You seem to argue that this is something "everyone does", that does not make it ok. I really thought we had gotten further in the privacy discussion.
It is being enforced, albeit slowly. The Danish authorities pretty much just banned the use of Google Classroom in the EU -- it's one piece at the time and it takes a long time before people react, considering the decision was made based on the now two year-old Schrems II case.
> Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
> Other apps you have installed (I've even seen some I've deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)
> Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)
> Whether or not you're rooted/jailbroken
> Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC
> They set up a local proxy server on your device for "transcoding media", but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication
Wait a minute - Why was Android or iPhone - built by West allows everything... Or if tiktok are the topdog in writing apps and FB missed out on writing these? Sour grapes?
Most of those metrics can be gathered by off the shelf analytics SDKs. Not hardware IDs though. If they are doing that on iOS they are certainly violating a number of rules.
The proxy server is disturbing if true. Only reason I could think of that being necessary would be to use customer devices to perform distributed transcoding of other people's videos. Can't imagine that being something Apple would allow.
I'm sure tiktok does a llt worse since that comment was written, but that list is a tiny subset of what facebook has been caught doing in the past and what microsoft, google and apple do now.
The US government do not hold large corportations to account, quite the opposite. They put people in jail for successfully fighting them legally or turn a blind eye when whistleblowers are car bombed. They make deals with facebook and google for the data so they can say 'it's a private company and independent entity'.
China would likely be just as bad if they were as powerful, but from the point of view of most of the world they have stolen far less of our natural resources, killed/deposed far fewer of our democratically elected governments, bought up far less of our media and turned it into propaganda, spied on our citizens less, and abused treaty law to curtail our freedoms far less.
I don't think its about data at all, I think it's that they're scared China has control of a system they can feed whatever narrative they want on an individual level and whole parts of society in the west are hopelessly addicted to it.
From the data listed, it's a lot but personally with the current state of mobile os computing none of this seems all that out of the ordinary, it's just what is the sad state of those platforms. This is why I think the data is being used as an excuse.
THe app does seem to push agendas sometimes, although its just probably the algo. You spend a little extra time on one type of content, and boom that's now a big portion of what you'll see...but I could totally see that the feed could be used to bend minds towards or away from certain ideas through a subtle type of propaganda.
Of course they don't get applied across the board. As much as TikTok is a US national security risk, Google/Meta massively gathering data about citizens of other countries is a US national security asset.
The problem with privacy law is that some foreign powers won't abide by the laws. It's not unlike violence- a country can try to make a global law saying "Nobody is allowed to have a military", but if they actually get rid of their military, they will just get taken over by a different country which does have a military.
Updated my comment. I'm Canadian. I'm sure in some ways US national security assets benefit certain other countries too, but I'm not sure specifically what that might be.
The EU also fines companies in its own members countries for the same offenses...
If anything, given that the fines are largely based on scope of offense and capped at a percentage of turnover, the larger US companies have been getting off lightly compared to smaller companies given their settlements..
US applies US law globally. EU applies EU law in the EU - see the difference? At the very least, we as Europeans have some influence over local politics.
Not that I condone secret services collecting data in the way they do, but you're confusing state agencies collecting data with private companies collecting data.
And while I do think that state agencies nowadays have crossed most lines of what may be be deemed acceptable it should still be clear that in some cases it's necessary for a government to have the authority to do things a normal citizen doesn't (eg you're not allowed to sentence people to jail, vigilantism etc).
Also one of the articles is actually about a German court striking down one of the surveillance tactics so this just sounds like whataboutism to defend one nation and bash another. Despite all its faults, concerning spying and data-collection, the EU is likely the smallest offender out of the big players in this world.
>but you're confusing state agencies collecting data with private companies collecting data.
I'm sorry, was I the one that mentioned that the US is a hypocrite because the STATE spies on the internet? I think you're confusing my post with the one that I responded to.
>Despite all its faults, concerning spying and data-collection, the EU is likely the smallest offender out of the big players in this world.
So they're just small hypocrites instead of big ones?
>whataboutism to defend one nation and bash another
Who's defending who? If the US are hypocrites, then so are the EU. Both are spying hypocrites. The whataboutists are the ones that rush to defend Europe because they view it as a utopian ideal.
> Make the collection itself illegal, give users control about their data
Here is another idea that could give users control about their data, and that could be more easily accepted by governments and companies.
All the data of user X living in country Y should be stored on a server handled by country Y. Moreover, add the following features:
- User X should be able to see all the people and companies that have access to his or her data.
- Country Y could put some tax on each request, that should cover at least the costs for maintening the servers.
This would give users more control about their data, and this would give countries more compensation on the monetizable data coming from its land.
The compensation would be a motivation for the governments to implement and maintain these servers.
Moreover, as opposed to a full ban on data collection, this approach might be accepted by companies since they would still be able to work with users data: just now they would need to pay for them and also they would need to let users know exactly who they sell the data to. In particular, if they sell the data to agressive ads companies, this would be known by the users and this could decrease their reputation.
From a technical point of view it seems doable and a service with similar features is already implemented in Estonia for example [1].
> Everything they're accusing TikTok of - from data harvesting to the government having access to said data - is true for western companies as well and that should be the problem. Not the fact that the data is now in the hands of the Chinese but that the data is being collected at all provided to the government.
Yes western governments are totally full of shit too, the proof of this is that Julian Assange is still being crucified for leaking information, for being a whistle blower.
We're all so trained to thinking the Government is ok now that it's really hard to know what to do about it.
> Yes western governments are totally full of shit too, the proof of this is that Julian Assange is still being crucified for leaking information, for being a whistle blower.
That’s just not true. Many leakers and whistle blowers aren’t prosecuted every year.
Julian Assange is a pretty transparent Russian asset and has been for a number of years. There’s a reason he never leaks anything that is negative of Putin. Meanwhile if it’s anti-American he leaks it in full without taking any standard journalist precautions.
Of course he can pull the “I’m just a journalist bro” card, but the act is over and his time is up.
> If it's true, what does saying it's anti-American mean? Would you rather be in the dark about shady shit your government is doing?
Sure, as long as it’s accompanied by safe journalist practices (which it isn’t) and also calls out the shady shit of other, opposed, countries (which (which it doesn’t).
> It’s entirely possible that he just has better access to US sources than Russian ones.
That’s fine and possible, but even if that wasn’t the case - and he had access to Russian leaks but didn’t leak them - this is still exactly what he would say.
And it’s possible both are true - that he’s simply releasing what is given to him, and the Russian state saw this and took the opportunity to feed him information as a result. At that point, after he has continually irresponsibly released covert information from a hostile state, how is he any different in practice than an intentional hostile actor?
Hear hear. We don't need selective takedowns of foreign intelligence assets for the sake of scoring political brownie points, we need strong privacy laws that apply to every company, including domestic ones. Unfortunately, half of the users on this forum don't want to hear this because their paycheck depends on being complicit in the gross violation of individual privacy.
In other news, Russian government is going to enact a law[0] that would require businesses to provide collected personal data to the government on demand. Not anonymized and without personal consent. The presumption is a single governmental agency would anonymize it, properly store, protect and provide anonymized datasets to other agencies and businesses to develop on.
This is already being called 'data nationalization'.
American companies working against national security will be held accountable. A Chinese companh working against american national security will be celebrated at home instead.
A Chinese company would likely be staffed by CCP members and funded by the Chinese government to work against American national security if there was opportunity to do so
> American companies working against national security will be held accountable
.. are you sure about that? The argument is often made that the First Amendment (and the second amendment!) provide Americans (and not foreign nationals or companies operating within America) with a constitutional right to work against American national security.
Haha not at all. The constitution is esentially suspended the moment national security is invoked. It is still in effect but it is interpreted such that the authors of the rights and amendments clearly implied that those rights only apply i n times of peace which is why they can kill a US citizen with a drone strike while unarmed and posing no immediate threat with no due process or consequences. It's the joker card for the government basically.
Sort of, the american people will not celebrate to the most part apple or google working against the chinese government but the american government will sure cheer them on. But the Chinese people will be on CCP's side if it works against american national security, the CCP has popular support in China because of the economic improvements it has enabled.
Yeah, you might update your view of other countries eventually. What you are describing are North-Korean-style mass "protests", often at gunpoint, in which it appears that a large mass of people cheer for the fall of the 'great imperialist demon'. Go talk to Chinese or Iranians or [insert future mortal enemy of the US], and you'll see: a population most often could not care less what the US does (or what is done against the US), unless the US is currently in the process of murdering said population.
Hell, even the Vietnamese don't hate on the US as much these days - even though they'd have every reason to.
I am not talking about protests but actual Chinese people and their views. They are very supportive of the CCP. Chinese expats however tend to be mostly pro-US
> the annoying part is that the same rules don't get applied across the board
The same rules mostly do get applied across the board, which is why this story is about some guy writing a letter to private companies asking them to please find TikTok in breach of those companies' terms of service.
He doesn't actually have sweeping powers of censorship that would allow him to just ban them on a whim, so he does the next best thing and raises his political profile so he might get considered for a more important job the next time his political party is in power.
I think it's unlikely that Apple or Google will find TikTok to be in breach of their terms, and even less likely that Americans will be completely banned from accessing TikTok.
>The problem should be that the data is collected and provided to the government whenever they want - not that it's not the Chinese government.
I disagree, because this is a "both things can be true" situation. It's true that data collection is a problem inherently and it's true that China's unprecedented scale of use and abuse of data escalates the urgency of Tiktok's case in particular.
I also think as a practical matter, "we should apply this to all apps" has the functional effect of being a poison pill ensuring nothing gets done. I think we should accept imperfect forward iterations to improve security over poison pills.
You could argue that a data hoarder in a jurisdiction other than your own is even less significant for personal data security. I agree though that western companies more or less don't have any case here as they behave the same way as TikTok in China. They are just less dishonest about it.
Furthermore the behavior of intelligence agencies sanctioned this kind of surveillance. Ironically the decreased trust will be vastly more relevant to lessened security than their surveillance attempts could ever make up for. So they failed their primary mission too. In a supposedly free country it is a strategy that only produces losers and there is not change in sight.
China's big players from what I have seen have incompetent at even just advertising in the west.
I remember reading an American study that went into this around the time these alerts around foreign misinformation started to get big.
Turns out Russia is pretty damn good at it. The bit China tries is small and again incompetent (An example given was at small scale shelling out to buy popular content accounts and suddenly turning them from a volkswagen beetle account into a full on propaganda account only to get instabanned) and there's somehow a lot more anti china bots on twitter than pro.
Having no horse in either place i'm not particularly outraged about the attempts especially considering the US does similar more effectively.
The past and present is not the future. Only 20 years ago China was a third world country and conventional wisdom was that China could only make cheap trinkets and never be a threat to the mighty US economy.
Now they manufacture practically everything: the computers that drive our lives, makeup that fancies our wives, widgets for all of our digits, and even some foods to feed our broods.
Why can’t China improve in other areas like influential advertising and media campaigns? Having more data from TikTok doesn’t hurt their chances.
You're trying have obvious, bad attempts prove the absence of better, unnoticed attempts, which isn't necessarily true. The point stands though; that any property (Twitter, Facebook, TikTok) with an algorithmic feed has an immense amount of control over the social discourse and direction of a country. More than newspapers do, and yellow journalism pulled us into the Spanish–American War.
And the only time they'll be any good at it is when they parrot your local sources of disinformation, so at most they can amplify the entirely domestic problems that already exist.
The more I read about the dangers of disinformation, the more I get the idea that 'disinformation' just means 'information my current government does not agree with'.
The US government does not agree with China that the US army created SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. But every scientist and rational person also doesn't agree with China. You're going to have to update your definition.
I am probably being naive, but I'd like to see the banning of TikTok as a precedence case for the banning of other abusive networks in the future, whatever country they may operate from.
Wouldn’t that be great? Unfortunately, unless it benefits the critical stakeholders (eg military complex and corporate elite), actions like this will be discriminatory, selective and rare.
I think things will move in the right direction. Next we should see Europe ban meta apps in Europe. Let's own our data again. Make the apps store data locally only.
As far as the gov’t is concerned, when it’s then doing it, it’s ‘for our own good’. when it’s another gov’t doing it, it’s a national security risk.
Which shouldn’t be too big of a surprise I guess, especially since ‘national security risk’ almost always means ‘threat to gov’t security in practice’.
That won’t change unless there is some kind of disaster that makes it untenable. I mean, just look at Nuclear proliferation for a really clear example.
Eligible US Voters can elect a new US Government at various branches and change what US companies do with data through regulations/legislation.
Even that theoretical route is not possible when it comes to a foreign company. Therefore the FCC guy (who is theoretically beholden to US citizens, or wanting to be perceived that way, or wanting to do so for his buddies at Western tech companies) is making the recommendation.
You’re trying to apply kindergarten-level ideas of fairness to a technological Cold War. In theory, you’re right - it would be great if everyone could just get along and be nice! But, well…
It’s similar to the paradox of intolerance… the paradox of force. Should we live by the rules of fairness while others don’t? Should we expose ourselves to the same risks that others expose themselves just out of fairness?
Exactly right. The don't want anyone doing what they are busy doing. The nerve of some countries!!! We've away some much privacy just for the lols. We need laws and penalties that give us back our freedom. Unfortunately, given politicians continual demand for back doors that will "only be used legally with a warrant", I see little hope that things will change.
As someone who despises companies like Google, Facebook etc, I can easily and confidently say if my choice was between them harvesting all the data about me that exists in the world and TikTok (or anything else that's China-related in any way, shape or form) doing the same, I'll pick the former 11 out of 10 times.
FWIW, and this in no way defending western companies and governments, according to research, TikTok collects vastly more data that the worst western culprit - Facebook. Still, my guess is that additional data TikTok collects is probably not that important for the likes of FB and western governments, so perhaps it's a moot point.
This isn't about TikTok posing a security risk to the consumer. It's about TikTok posing a security risk to the state. Of course the FCC, which is effectively an arm of the US government, is not going to be as concerned about corporations handing your data over to the US government.
That might be a reason to generally block more data collection, but not to allow the Chinese government to continue to collect data - unless the argument is that collection is kind of "indivisible", i.e., as soon as anyone collects anything everything is "lost".
You're assuming the government's goal is to treat all countries and companies fairly. It's not. It will always make decisions in its own interests. Whether that is ethical is neither here nor there, I can't imagine of a world where that's not the case.
Closing the barn door after the horses have bolted is too little too late. Everyone has these capabilities now. And the FCC is not neutral, of course it makes a difference to them whether domestic agencies get their hands on the data or foreign ones.
the fact that the rhetoric and wardrumming has not abated seems to indicate FAANG players are facing a no-win situation when it comes to competition. The fact that Facebook and Youtube shorts are near-nightly parity scrapes of Tiktok content and they still cant manage to staunch the loss of viewers is a pretty damning indictment of the leadership at these groups.
Huawei went through basically the same thing when western chip companies and telcos were beat to market by nearly a year for 5G. Grinding the red scare axe to an audience of bought and paid for octogenarians is still a pretty good grift it seems.
Ironically I think you can make a pretty strong case that both the Chinese and American governments are more of a threat to their own citizens data wise given that citizens tend to primarily be pestered within their own jurisdiction.
That's not unreasonable. What I'd disagree with is if people thought a company based in a foreign liberal democracy presented a similar threat to a company based in China, which has an authoritarian government where state & corporations are largely merged and which is entangled in balance of power disputes with the US.
The US acts exactly like an authoritarian country in foreign interactions. Murder, wars of aggression, facilitating genocide, espionage, and so on. History shows that if you are not American then the US will treat you as if it is an authoritarian state.
I'm completely against this surveilance capitalism that's pursued by big tech, but asking the US gov to use the same rules "for everyone" seems naive and bad for the world economy.
All countries have primarily a duty to their citizens, and only then to foreign entities. Even though there are plenty of points of improvement the US can make here, accepting that at least some discrimination against external citizens or companies should happen seems to be an axiom of governmental organization.
I'm European btw and have a US-incorporated start-up.
> All countries have primarily a duty to their citizens, and only then to foreign entities.
There is no innate duty of a state to anyone, it's a function of the policies of the people we elect. In many peoples view laws should apply equally regardless of where you are from.
If laws apply equally even to foreigners, then what's the purpose of the concept of citizenship?
All people I know will treat their childred differently than random children on the playground, I'd imagine some analogy to this situation is not entirely lost on anyone.
>data harvesting to the government having access to said data - is true for western companies as well and that should be the problem
Very much this. As a European who doesn't intent to set a single foot in China, I'm much more comfortable at the thought of China having my data than my own government.
What if your government gets the data anyway? Hackers could hack TikTok servers and release data or sell to interested parties. Your government may already be tracking your TikTok usage by sniffing traffic on intermediate servers or other measures. Or China may even sell or share this information (or worse, manipulated false information) for strategic purposes.
I feel like I need to use clapping hands emojis to get the point across, but I will refrain.
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The US government is more ethical and more respectful of the rule of law and human rights than Russia or China.
Let me paste it in again, so we know it isn't a typo:
The US government is more ethical and more respectful of the rule of law and human rights than Russia or China.
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The US government is not perfect. Portions of the US government are a danger to the rights of some people, particularly civilians in the middle east. Regarding "cyber", it has several major stains on its history, including PRISM, XKeyscore, warrantless wiretapping, and the current president's support of the Clipper chip in the 90s.
I support privacy protections on mobile devices and mobile apps, and support in general stronger regulations against the collection of personal information by tech giants.
I resent Meta and Google for the amount of data they collect about me and everyone I know with any Android device/Meta app installed.
Every statement I have made can be made while non-hypocritically supporting the statement by the FCC regarding TikTok. It isn't just economic protectionism - it's national security. I don't think a Chinese politician or military official should have Facebook or Instagram installed on their mobile phone, either.
Data collection is passive. TikTok, for all intents and purposes, is run by the Chinese communist government. Facebook has already shown that they can alter moods:
It's a numbers game. They have ~80,000,000 Americans tuned in. They can turn knobs when they need to alter US public opinion. A subtle shift of 80,000,000 people is big.
Many people also get their news from TikTok:
> TikTok, on the other hand, has seen a slight uptick in the portion of users who say they regularly get news on the site, rising from 22% to 29% in this period.
Of course the rules don't get applied to Western companies, that is a ridiculous proposition: to ask a state to limit its own power.
> The problem should be that the data is collected and provided to the government whenever they want
Maybe in someone's ideal world that doesn't exist this could be the problem formulation. In real world, TikTok is not strictly under control of EUSIAN blob so it's a threat and it's natural for state to restrict its influence.
Underlying your point there is an assumption that Chinese government = American government in it's misuse of data etc.
I don't think this is true. And I've run a privacy advocate organisation and I'm a complete Snowden fanboy. But if I had to choose between giving my data to the CCP or the American government, the choice is easy.
Even though a lot of data collection was done without warrants in the USA, there's been a lot of blowback, and there is still changing presidents/executive, changing representatives, and rule of law (not perfect, but still there).
On the other side you have a CCP rolling out social scoring, running concentration camps, etc etc.
It's just not the same. Let's not pretend it is somehow equivalent.
> Even though a lot of data collection was done without warrants in the USA, there's been a lot of blowback...
Was there? Who went to jail for it? Did anyone even get fired?
James Clapper lied to Congress[1] about data collection, the only reason we even know is a leaker who can never return to the US for his "crimes". Meanwhile Clapper served out the rest of Obama's presidency and now has a cushy job at CNN[2].
“We must not do anything about recent thing that is very bad and unpredictable because of this other thing which is also quite bad but we’ve been learning to manage it for 15 years”
However instead of regulating everyone, banning one player and leaving the opportunity for others (including new players) to continue "bad thing" is not a good solution, is it?
Meta is already extremely regulated, both by governments and externally managed processes like the oversight board. If TikTok were an American corporation that played by the same rules, it would be a massive improvement.
If you want to argue for more laws, go ahead. But don't do this whataboutism where you pretend like you care about these issues, and argue against ways of stopping, at least some of the bad things happening.
Help me understand your perspective: are you American or no? I have a hard time understanding why an American wouldn't see FAANG as the lesser of two evils here.
Conversely, if you're an American in America who doesn't travel abroad what is the threat TikTok poses when compared to the FAANGs? Given the cozy relationship between the US and FAANGs I think it's possible to argue that unfettered government access to FAANG data is more of a threat (to the average US citizen) when compared to the Chinese government having access to your user data via TikTok. But I'm not set on any of this and would like to understand more.
A healthy middle-class in America, with immediate needs like healthcare and housing met, is China's best interests as that means Americans have more money to spend on consumer goods.
The Koch Brothers want to dismantle all the organs of state they don't approve of.
So you think fair elections are less important than your own security? You may have a problem after your country turns authoritarian, even if your computer is secure.
We don't have "fair" elections after Citizen's United.
We don't have "fair" elections after the FCC scrapped the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s under Regan.
We don't have "fair" elections for the president since we don't directly elect the president.
The scenario where china somehow designs a dastardly TikTok video that convinces---I'm sorry "manipulates"---young people to vote en mass in a way that somehow advances the national interests of China and against their own material concerns is remote. But, I'm not sure how that's worse than any other garden variety Super PAC, or billionaire debutante like Mike Bloomberg or Howard Schultz.
They’re all nefarious. Your data should not be in the hands of any data broker or Government without explicit consent.
But if you wanna beat the drum of Jingoism, here is a counter argument: the Chinese Government has little interest in the activities of most domestic US citizens. Its the US Federal Government that cares if American citizens are feeling too rebellious.
>Chinese Government has little interest in the activities of most domestic US citizens.
Including influencing public perception of domestic and international events? You may as well say the Chinese government doesn't care about world politics.
Also it's not "Jingoist" to assume that a foreign government (with whom we've had friction) has less of our interests in mind than our own government.
Practically, I'll be more concerned about my government having the data vs a third world. I rarely get involved in Chinese politics/threads and have little interaction with them except everything is manufactured there. I may visit China/Taiwan/Hong Kong as a tourist sometime in future.
For my own country I am actively interested in and sometime involved in political discussions/forums. I have stronger opinion in favour/against current government and will have lot more influence on my local.
So the govt./org. trying to suppress/persecute me will be with high probability my own vs China or Russia.
not an american, but don't forget that america strives on democracy, which means approx the same laws for everyone.
killing tiktok because it's too successful will undermine US credibility as a fair entity in any kind of business negociation, with any country.
I wouldn't be surprised if this case would be used later by the EU in regulating FAANGs even more and inventing taxes just for them ( which, as a european i find completely outrageous, for the same reasons).
FAANG has a data sharing mandate with the US government. My own government spying on me is more dangerous than some foreign government spying on me, because it is unlikely I wake up looking into the barrel of a Chinese exfiltration team at three in the night. Getting woken at gunpoint by the local village idiot/Sheriff because they don't like my surfing pattern is a lot more likely.
Not just FAANG! Smaller vendors are a very significant threat vector, too, precisely because they are smaller. More owners with smaller margins, looking to squeeze the last bit of profit from the available data, thus entering grey areas almost by definition. Entire markets emerged just from this - afaik data brokers dont get access to, say, Apples Databases. At least FAANG has no real business incentive to sell the data directly.
Sorry for stating the obvious, but for US authorities having the world’s data in the hands of an American company is a strategic asset, having it in the hands of a Chinese company is a strategic liability.
The dance around that issue will be more entertaining than any dance skit we will see on TikTok. Avoidance of addressing it is the reason Tiktok has been allowed to run as long as it has. Push surveillance capitalism to the max and expose the hypocrisy that can bring down one of America's biggest industries. Well played China!
Whatever society or country will realise first that they have to raise their youth so they will be able to withstand the lure of social media, regardless what company makes it, will become the leading society in the world in 50-100 years.
Yes. I think this is one of the topics Trump was spot on about but because of his reputation he was ignored. TikTok should have been banned and the United States would have been better off for it.
It's less true in the modern world, but traditionally, "The US" doesn't run any kind of business. It's like the anecdote where Gorbachev saw a supermarket and asked which government official was in charge of making sure it was stocked.
The US runs hardly any businesses… and yet it clearly matters to China if the business is Chinese regarding if you get to run a social media company locally…
China and the US are converging to a disturbing (to me at least) degree, in the sense that the big-player companies are intertwined with the national government; the US is kind of in denial about that.
I am shocked that nobody has mentioned that aside from the privacy and national security concern related to data collection, another major issue is that the chinese can literally program our Youth. They can run psychological programs, influence campaigns.
TikTok is an ominous name. It's literally creating tics in teenagers. TikTok also seems like a psychological weapon, which is a ticking time bomb until the Chinese take over the world (their stated goal)
Tic defined as "an idiosyncratic and habitual feature of a person's behavior." Yesterday, Tucker Carlson (bad man) did a segment on the difference between American TikTok and Chinese Douyin. It's clear that the Chinese are curating the algorithms differently. Douyin content is made to be good for society, whereas TikTok content is degenerate. The algorithm is everything.
China has every incentive to push our young people to be mental cases and TikTok has the potential to do this.
For example, TikTok is likely speeding up the rate at which teen girls experience rapid onset gender dysphoria. A teen may be confused about who they are, they watch one or two videos related to the topic, then they are sent down a rabbit hole of this content.
I am happy to see the FCC of this administration speaking out. TikTok was going to be banned by the last administration but this administration put a stop to that in their effort to roll back all of Trump (bad man) policy.
The way I see it is that the main difference between FANG and TikTok is that the FANG companies do not have any incentive to sow distrust and division in the United States through highly targeted propaganda, however, TikTok being effectively controlled by the CCP does.
> he main difference between FANG and TikTok is that the FANG companies do not have any incentive to sow distrust and division in the United States through highly targeted propaganda
I'm not sure I agree with that, maybe TT could have incentives to _actively_ sow distrust and division, but I think it's fair to say that FANG companies are doing this today, driven mostly by maximizing ad views & creating negative feedback loops where we get echo chambers
Apple's data in China is handled by China government affiliated entity https://technode.com/2018/01/10/apple-icloud-guizhou/ . China's typical play book in tech field is to have the original products banned and have their own copycat flourish.
This is dangerous political rhetoric which sets the stage for all sorts of tit-for-tat regulation that seeks to optimize for the protection of local companies (in this case, Meta/Facebook/Instagram, which have the world's largest face database and have consistently violated laws + lobbied against them).
Imagine what would happen if a Chinese regulator decided that Tesla's telematics stack was a massive national security risk? One random comment from some loser trying to build a political career (like this guy) and you'd see the stock go through a small crash.
The capture of American bureaucracy by paid interests is going to be the downfall of the country. Michael Lewis has been talking about this quite a bit recently, and will apparently make this the subject of his next book. I hope everyone reads it.
They already do that. China is notoriously strict about information control, hence minimal presence of western social media and tech companies on their market.
Like when Google refused to comply with censorship. They've got clipped almost immediately[0] and haven't recovered to this day. And no, there was no appeal, no political process or way to get around it.
If anything, America is lagging behind rest of the world in regulation, and is letting foreign companies get away with things that would get them banned in rest of the world.
Another example would be ongoing EU crusade against media piracy.